Past projects - Stress Tolerant Orphan Legumes (STOL)
Project Title: “Benchmarking traits controlling the plant water budget in orphan legumes”
PI: Dr Vincent Vadez
Institute: ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India
Funding Period: October 2014 – December 2017 (3 years)
Summary: The project’s main aim was to evaluate the plant water needs of several orphan legume species across the seasons and compare them to commonly grown legume species. The project aimed to evaluate the overall water needs and the traits that conditioned plant water use through two sub objectives – (i) analysing the plant water budget of these different species (using lysimeters), under both a fully irrigated and terminal water stress and (ii) measure now known traits contributing to water saving in these legume species.
The project discovered that moth bean and tepary bean exhibited the least amount of water usage, while horsegram and moth bean were particularly effective in setting seed under moisture deficient conditions.
Trials of cowpea, rice bean, horsegram, dolichos and moth bean.
Project Title: “Multiplication of Orphan Legumes”
PI: Dr Pavithravani B. V.
Institute: NMAIST, Arusha, Tanzania
Funding Period: September 2015 – March 2020 (5 years)
Summary: The project’s original aim was to gather as many accessions of STOL germplasm as possible (from any seed banks that had enough germplasm to share), multiply the seed, and store the germplasm ready to distribute to field trial sites throughout Africa. Over the course of the project, PI Dr Pavithravani B.V. managed to get hold of 50 accessions of each STOL species, multiplied them up, and sent them out to the various STOL field trial sites.
Dr Pavithravani, Professor Ndakidemi and Professor Southern visiting the multiplication site in Moshi, 2019
Project Title: “Evaluation of Stress Tolerant Orphan Legumes (STOL) for use in dryland farming systems across sub-Saharan Africa and India - Promoting India-Africa Framework for Strategic Cooperation”
PI: Dr Joseph Wandulu
Institute: NaSARRI-NARO, Entebbe, Uganda
Funding Period: June 2019 – May 2021 (2 years)
Summary: Like with the current STOL project, the one in Uganda aimed to (i) identify promising varieties of each STOL species (ii) multiply and exchange seed to partners for evaluation (iii) carry out farmer field trials of the best performing crops and varieties (iv) Increase the capacity of scientists, extension workers and farmers for promoting and growing STOL crops (v) Strengthen local seed systems.
The project came to and end in May 2021, due to the conditions of the fields not being suitable to test the heat and drought tolerance of the STOL crops.
Farmers field day held at NaSARRI-NARO, January 2020
Project Title: “Evaluation of Stress Tolerant Orphan Legumes (STOL) for use in dryland farming systems across sub-Saharan Africa and India - Promoting India-Africa Framework for Strategic Cooperation”
PI: Dr Francis Kusi
Institute: SARI, Accra, Ghana
Funding Period: June 2019 – May 2021 (2 years)
Summary: Like with the current STOL project, the one in Ghana aimed to (i) identify promising varieties of each STOL species (ii) multiply and exchange seed to partners for evaluation (iii) carry out farmer field trials of the best performing crops and varieties (iv) Increase the capacity of scientists, extension workers and farmers for promoting and growing STOL crops (v) Strengthen local seed systems.
The project came to and end in May 2021, due to the conditions of the fields not being suitable to test the heat and drought tolerance of the STOL crops.
Project Title: “Breeding Dolichos bean for high grain / pod yield and pod fragrance”
PI: Dr M. Byre Gowda
Institute: UAS, Bangalore, India
Funding Period: April 2015 – March 2018
Summary: The project continued on improving its already successful HA3 and HA4, which had been bred and released to produce greater yields, under photosensitive conditions. The project produced eight advanced breeding lines which delivered further improvement to the already released HA3 and HA4 lines.
