Bean Discovery Could Help Fight Rust Fungus
3 March 2009 US Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service (USDA-FAS) has detected 3,000 proteins produced in common bean plants could help breeders develop resistance against the bean rust fungus, Uromyces appendiculatus – a major problem for domestic dry bean and snap bean growers. This rust, prevalent throughout the continental United States, causes the leaves to curl upward, dry, turn brown, and drop prematurely, while pod set, pod fill, and seed size are reduced.
In 2004, Asian soybean rust – which infects soybeans, but not common beans – arrived in the United States, severely threatening the US crop. ARS scientists hope that the discovery of the dry bean rust disease resistance proteins will help identify similar proteins in soybeans and advance soybean breeding efforts as well.
Plant pathologist Bret Cooper, at the ARS Soybean Genomics and Improvement Laboratory (SGIL) in Beltsville, Md., leads the research. The study, which could help scientists determine which proteins produced in bean plants are involved in providing resistance to rust fungus, revealed more than 1,500 interactions between the fungus and the plant and led to the identification of a potential set of proteins thought to be master regulators of a strong resistance response in the plant. This new information may help breeders improve bean varieties that are currently threatened by rust. The research was published recently in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics.
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