ABSTRACT
Developing improved varieties of faba bean Fouad Maalouf, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Lebanon; and Seid Ahmed and Somanagouda Patil, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Morocco
1 Introduction
2 Heat tolerance
3 Drought tolerance
4 Herbicide tolerance
5 Breeding for resistance to foliar diseases
6 Breeding for broomrape resistance
7 Biological nitrogen fixation
8 Major achievements
9 Future trends and conclusion
10 References
Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is the third most important cool-season food legume crop grown under rainfed and irrigated conditions in more than 55 countries. It is grown under different cropping systems as dry grains, green pods, animal feed and green manure worldwide on 2.4 million ha, with 4.4 million tons produced in 2014 (Fig. 1). Faba bean production has been shown to contribute to reduction of carbon footprint of cereal-based agricultural production systems through its ability to fix nitrogen that can be used by the succeeding cereal crop and by breaking the cycle of biotic stresses (Jensen et al. 2010).
