Stoddard Fred

Description

My research focuses on faba bean (Vicia faba) but also touches on legume crops. I have projects on genomics, genetics and breeding, sustainability and crop quality for food and feed. Europe suffers from a huge deficit in plant protein: 70% of its supplementary plant protein needs are imported, mostly soya bean from North and South America, and mostly to feed pigs and chickens. At the same time, its rotations are too narrowly based on the high-yielding small-grain cereals, particularly wheat and barley, so soil-borne diseases may become endemic. Furthermore, European agriculture relies heavily on inputs of nitrogen from fertilizer and, to a lesser extent, manure, with impacts on greenhouse gas releases and nitrate leaching. Many of these difficulties, and others, can be at least partially resolved by increased usage of grain legumes that fix their own nitrogen, provide high-protein seeds for food and feed use, leave at least some nitrogen-rich residue for following crops, and break the cycles of soil-borne diseases of cereals while promoting the growth of beneficial soil micro-organisms. Yields of legumes lag behind those of the cereals, as do their stress resistances, largely due to a relative lack of breeding effort for the past 2-3 decades. In order for European legume yields and yield stability to improve, and to withstand the increased stresses expected from climate change, new sources of stress resistance, yield and quality need urgently to be identified for the major grain legume crops. The new traits then need to be transferred into agronomically viable cultivars by developing rapid, omics-supported methods. We had a successful project using the Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy, in collaboration with ICARDA, to identify potential sources of drought tolerance in faba bean. Subsequent work has identified sources of tolerance to rootzone acidity. Further application of these sources of stress resistance will be accelerated by the development of tools for rapid breeding based on knowledge of the genome of the crop. We have had a project from the Academy of Finland, 'Papugeno', aimed at sequencing the gene space of faba bean and this has led to partnership in a consortium that is sequencing the whole genome and assembling it (2020). The current ERANET SusCrop project 'ProFaba' aims to link genotyping with the phenotyping for many of these stress- and productivity-related responses, thus moving towards the provision of genomic tools for breeding. Our other ERANET SusCrop project, LegumeGap, focuses on the adaptation of faba bean and soybean to different parts of Europe and how the reliability of yield can be improved. H2020 project Legumes Translated develops communication channels among farmers, processors and consumers in order to improve the market situation for legume crops. Crop quality is also important, and I enjoy working with colleagues in the feed and food sciences, here and abroad, on aspects of grain legume quality. Our cooperation has led to advances in processing of grain legume flours and protein isolates that can enable the production of new foods. My teaching in the department relates to these research themes and I contribute to several courses on crop science and crop quality. In addition, I run several of the department's service courses for international and master's-level students, including (together with colleagues) the course on scientific writing.

Keywords

crop improvement

Affiliations

University of Helsinki

Maatalous-metsätieteellinen tiedekunta

2010 - present

Source: University of Helsinki

University of Helsinki

University Lecturer, Docent

Department of Agricultural Sciences

2007 - present

Source: ORCID

University of Helsinki

Source: ORCID

Education (3)

PhD

University of Cambridge

MSc

University of Ottawa

BSc (First Class Honours in Biology

Carleton University

Publications (224)

Show only peer-reviewed

2024

Faba bean as a sustainable protein source

DOI

10.1016/B978-0-323-91652-3.00001-0

2023

Evaluation of pathogenicity of Botrytis species isolated from different legumes

DOI

10.3389/fpls.2023.1069126

The giant diploid faba genome unlocks variation in a global protein crop

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-05791-5