15.06.2026

This report sets out the progress that has been made up until August 2024 in Legume Generation in boosting the breeding of pea. The Pea Innovation Community (PIC) was established to address pressing challenges in pea cultivation while unlocking the crop’s potential for sustainable agriculture and protein diversification. Since its launch, the PIC has made substantial progress in building a coordinated research community, generating genomic and phenotypic resources, and establishing the community infrastructure required for pre-breeding. In particular, we have made progress in: (i) community building with active engagement across academic, public-sector, and commercial partners; (ii) characterising the Pisum diversity panel, consolidating genomic data and establishing a reference set for trait discovery; (iii) delivered multi-trait phenotyping across various environments, generating robust datasets on key traits relevant to climate resilience and yield; and (iv) established a pipeline linking phenotypic data with genotypic information, enabling preliminary trait–genotype analyses and preparing the groundwork for marker development, thereby creating new opportunities for integrating pea into both public and private breeding pipelines. In the next steps, we will focus on expanding and integrating the multi-location trial datasets, advancing trait–genotype association analyses using pangeome approach, and developing new collaborative partnerships to extend the reach of PIC resources. These activities will support the generation of markers and pre-breeding lines for deployment within partner breeding programmes. The collaborative model has fostered new academic–industry partnerships, training opportunities, and international exchanges that will strengthen innovation capacity in legume research beyond this project.