INCREASING THE RATE OF GENETIC GAIN FOR YIELD AND QUALITY IN THE MICHIGAN STATE DRY BEAN BREEDING PROGRAM

The overarching goal of this project is to achieve faster genetics gain in dry bean by integrating modern breeding technologies in a conventional dry bean breeding program. To achieve this, our major goals are (1) Develop a high-throughput phenotyping pipeline to increase selection accuracy; (2) Develop genomics-assisted breeding pipeline to the accuracy, increase selection coefficient, and decrease length of breeding cycle; (3) Increase selection intensity through marker-assisted selection for biotic and quality traits; (4) Increasing additive genetic variance; (5) Develop improved dry bean varieties with increased SNF.