Food legumes are crucial for all agriculture-related societal challenges including climate change mitigation, agrobiodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, food security and human health. In this regard, a key aspect is the transition to plant-based diets, largely based on food legumes. The characterisation, maintenance and exploitation of food-legume genetic resources (GenRes), to date largely unexploited, form the core development of both sustainable agriculture and healthy food systems. INCREASE, focusing on chickpea, common bean, lentil and lupin, is implementing a new approach to conserve, manage and characterise GenRes. Intelligent Collections, consisting of nested core collections of single seed descent (SSD) purified accessions, are being developed, exploiting germplasm available from gene banks and on-farm, and subjected to different level of genotypic and phenotypic characterisation. Phenotyping and gene discovery activities will meet, via a participatory approach, the needs of various actors (breeders, scientists, farmers, agri-food and non-food industry), exploiting also the power of massive metabolomics and transcriptomics and of artificial intelligence and smart tools. Moreover, INCREASE is testing, with a Citizen Science Experiment (CSE), an innovative system of decentralized and dynamic conservation and use of GenRes, by promoting the use of food legumes, improving quality, adaptation and yield, and boosting the competitiveness of the agriculture and food sector, INCREASE has a major impact on economy and society, representing a case study of integrative and participatory approaches for conservation and exploitation of crop GenRes.
INCREASE aims to:
1. Improve management and sharing of food legume GenRes data through optimised databases and easily accessible tools;
2. Produce a large amount of high-quality genotypic and phenotypic data;
3. Develop Intelligent Collections for exploration of the GenRes diversity and design innovative conservation management approaches collaboratively;
4. Generate new knowledge made easily available through web-based searching and visualisation tools to identify appropriate sources of germplasm;
5. Develop, test and disseminate best practices for dynamic management of GenRes across worldwide institutions and initiatives;
6. Develop decentralised information technology approaches for data sharing and germplasm conservation.
