BELIS in Gand: The legumes of tomorrow

From 17 to 19 September, the 1st annual meeting of the European H2022 BELIS project was held in Gand, Belgium. The project aims to improve legume breeding to increase the sustainability of agricultural systems based on these species. All the partners met to share the initial progress and results of the past year. For GEVES, involved in this project in the workpackage dedicated to the study and optimisation of the evaluation of legume varieties for registration purposes, it was an opportunity to present the work undertaken on:

• The use of molecular markers in DUS studies, the choice of varieties to be studied in this line of research and the criteria determining which varieties to genotype,
• The collection of VCU protocols from the countries of the partners involved in the project to study the possibility of pooling the acquisition of varietal data.

Hosted by ILVO-EV, the meeting was also an opportunity to visit their facilities and discuss their variety research trials.