Project Name:
PeaCE: Pea Climate Efficient
URL Identifier:
PeaCE
Project Description:
The demand for food is expected to increase 35–50% by 2050 due to the growing human population, placing a strain on agriculture and requiring greater productivity. To meet this demand, synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are increasingly being applied to oilseeds and cereal crops to maximize yields. However, nitrogen fertilizer is a significant contributor to anthropogenic emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) that is ~300 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2). Therefore, there is a concurrent and urgent need to limit GHG emissions to the atmosphere. We need to reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture by ensuring that it is environmentally sustainable and able to meet the nutrition demands of the growing population. One potential solution to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer is to increase the acreage of nitrogen-fixing pulse crops. Among pulse crops, Pea has the lowest carbon footprint, fixes a very large amount of nitrogen and is an exceptional climate-efficient crop. It can provide protein with less than 1% of the emissions of the same amount of protein from animal sources. A mere doubling of pea crop acreage on the Canadian prairies (from 1.669 to 3.338 Mha) could reduce CO2 emissions by 0.92 Mt CO2e/year. Despite these climate benefits, pea adoption by farmers has been limited because pea is highly susceptible to root rot and drought. This makes it imperative to develop elite, climate-resilient and disease-resistant pea varieties that can easily be adopted by farmers in crop rotation so that the climate benefits can be realized immediately. The PEACE (Pea Climate Efficient) project will use a genomics approach to tackle the most important constraints and challenges facing pea production. PEACE will harness the genetic diversity of pea to make it more attractive and profitable, climate-efficient, and resilient to root rot and drought. Increased adoption of climate-efficient pea varieties will promote decarbonization and reduce GHG emissions from agricultural soils in Canada, while contributing to economic growth, jobs, and exports. Given the growing global demand for high-protein peas, this project will provide an important market opportunity for Canadian producers that will directly achieve the GHG reductions mandated by the Canadian government.
Principal Investigator (PI):
 
HUB-Harmonization Link:
 
Contact Email:
admin@csdcc.ca