In the summer, NordGen's working group for grain legumes conducted a pilot project with the purpose to find out if there is a safe distance to avoid cross-fertilization in common beans, information that can be valuable to bothgenebanks and seed producers. Beans with red stems were planted in a square as pollen doners and beans with green stems were planted at different distances from 0,25 to 24 meters. Two trials were situated in Sweden and one in Norway. At the end of the summer, the beans were harvested and germination tests were carried out to observe the coloration of the lower part of the lower parts of the stems of the new seedlings. A red lower part of a stem would tell that a cross-pollination had occurred. However, all germinated seedlings, from all distances at all three sites, had green lower part of the stems which indicates that no cross-pollination had taken place.
New Book About Nordic Peas
In the previous project Arctic Pea (conducted during 2017-2021), 50 accessions selected from NordGen's pea collection were evaluated in field trials at four different locations in the Nordic region: Tromsø (Norway), Umeå (Sweden), Jokioinen (Finland) and Taastrup (Denmark). For example, the results showed that no accessions managed to produce mature peas at the northernmost location but many accessions, most of them sugar peas (mainly landraces) with a northern origin did well and managed to produce a green harvest (pod and unripe seeds) that could be consumed as a vegetable. In 2022, the histories of these 50 pea varieties were gathered in a popular scientific book together with evaluation results from the field trials. In addition, the history of pea cultivation and breeding in the Nordic region and information about the Arctic Pea project are included. The book “Nordiska ärter – 50 traditionella sorter” is now available in NordGen’s webshop.