From the pages of Agricultural Research magazine Looking for Genes To Protect Beans Snap bean growers nationwide could benefit if ARS geneticist Phillip N. Miklas succeeds at unlocking the genetic secrets of resistance to white mold disease. Unlike dry beans, snap beans are eaten as flavorful, fleshy green pods. They are sold fresh, frozen, or canned. Some breeding lines already have partial resistance to white mold, the most costly disease of snap beans in the United States.
White mold lowers bean yield and pod quality and can kill the plants.
The fungus also infects many other crops, including lettuce, soybean, alfalfa, potato, pea, canola, and sunflower. Miklas works at the ARS Vegetable and Forage Crop Research Unit in Prosser, Washington. He's teaming up with researchers at Novartis Seeds, Inc., of Nampa, Idaho, under a cooperative research and development agreement. They will each develop a separate population of beans. Both sets of beans will use a breeding line developed at Cornell University as one of the parents.