Faba bean,a combine harvested crop with about 30% of seed protein content, is a traditional, domestic source of feed protein. As legume, the bean shows a very low CO2 footprint. With Current advances in breeding for improved winter hardiness and with climate change, we expect the expansion of winter faba beans beyond UK and France into Germany.

For the current projects, N =189 pure line winter beans were pheno-and genotyped; they represent the major part of German winter bean breeding germplasm and trace back to one diverse winter bean population (the Göttingen Winter Bean Population’). Phenotyping was for (1) physiological aspects of drought tolerance( e.g., drought-induced proline and glycinebetaine accumulation in leaves) and for (2) reaction to controlled frost events (after hardening; frost of - 16 to -19 °C; juvenile, potted plants). In addition, a subset of these lines (N=40) was phenotyped for reaction to drought s juvenile, potted plants in green-house and for drought induced yield depression(field-based rain-out shelters, 3 environments).

Repeatabilities of traits varied between 0.61<h2<0.9f3 or reaction to frost, 0.62<h2<0 .89f or Physiological traits, 0.37<h2<0.68 for reactions to drought in green-house and 0.00<h2<0.92 for yield-based drought tolerance. Genotyping was with 1147A FLP and 175S SNP markers (MAF>S7o), the majority of which are mapped. Most SNP are traceable (www.medicaqohapmap.oring ) the (highly syntenic) M. truncatula genome sequence. Association analyses (Tassel 3 .0.169. MLM, K-matrix) yielded N =5 putative Q TL for aspects of drought tolerance and N=9 (7 AFLP and 2 SNP) putative QTL for frost tolerance. This frost trait seems most promising for an immediate marker-assisted improvement: 'maintenance vs. Ioss of leaf color and leaf turgor after frost events', with eight QTL explaining together about 36% of the phenotypic variance. Analysis is ongoing; results (e.g., identification of superior parent lines for crossing) are entering practical breeding.