Legume crops are crucial for human nutrition and the sustainability of crop production systems because of their capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen.
However, major legume crops, whether grown by smallholder farmers such as cowpeas in Sub-Saharan Africa or those grown in the UK by commercial farmers, are characterised by unstable yields due to environmental stresses. On the other hand, enhancing end-use quality traits in legumes is crucial for transitioning towards healthier plant-based diets and a more sustainable crop production system.
Our work is predominantly applied research, and we aim to bridge the gap between breeding for agronomic performance and end-use quality traits by developing the genetic resources and tools required to simultaneously breed for these traits.
Research areas
Drought tolerance
Drought stress is a major constraint on food production worldwide. Therefore, it is pertinent to develop sustainable strategies, such as drought-tolerant crop varieties, to mitigate the impacts of climate change on global food security. We aim to understand the genetic basis of key morphological and physiological traits related to drought tolerance in legume crops such as cowpeas. By combining molecular genetics, genomics, and metabolomics, we strive to identify genetic loci associated with drought tolerance that can be used in marker-assisted breeding.
Nutritional quality
The dry seeds of many legume crops contain several compounds that are considered antinutrients. For instance, the concentrations of phytates, tannins, and polyphenols are known to reduce the bioavailability of minerals, such as iron and zinc. Thus, reducing the content of these compounds in staple food crops is crucial, particularly in low-income communities, where micronutrient malnutrition is prevalent. In addition, raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) are responsible for flatulence and abdominal discomfort associated with the consumption of most legumes. We are interested in identifying genetic variants for lower RFOs without penalties for agronomic performance.
About the group leader
Ahmed Warsame did his undergraduate at the University of Gadarif, Sudan, and his Masters at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He then moved to the University of Reading and obtained a Ph.D. in crop science, after which he joined the John Innes Centre in Norwich as a postdoctoral researcher to work on the genetics of pea nutritional quality in the labs of Professor Janneke Balk and Professor Claire Domoney.
