Feb 282013
 
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Drought stalks, some die
Despite the widespread cultivation of beans in Africa, yields are low, stagnating at between 20 and 30 percent of their potential. Drought brought about by climate change is the main culprit, afflicting 70 percent of Africa’s major bean-producing regions in Southern and Eastern Africa.Bean plant by R Okono

Today we turn the spotlight on Zimbabwe, where drought is a serious and recurrent problem. Crop failure is common at altitudes below 800 meters, and livestock death from shortage of fodder and water are all too common. In recent history, nearly every year is a drought year in these low-lying regions frequently plagued by delayed rains, as well as by intermittent and terminal drought.

The ‘battleground’ and ‘blend’
Zimbabwe is divided into five Natural Regions or agroecological zones. More than 70 percent of smallholder farmers live in Natural Region 3, 4 and 5, which jointly account for 65 percent of Zimbabwe’s total land area (293,000 km2). It is also here that the searing dual forces of drought and heat combine to ‘sizzle’  and whittle bean production.

The rains are insufficient for staple foods such as maize, and some of their complementary legumes such as groundnuts. In some areas where temperatures do not soar too high (less than 30oC), beans blend perfectly into the reduced rainfall regime that reigns during the growing season.

A deeper dig: the root of the matter

Godwill Makunde

Godwill Makunde

Research from Phase I of the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project under GCP’s Legume Research Initiative showed that deep rooting is one of the ways to confer drought tolerance in common beans. High plant biomass at pod-filling stage also confers drought tolerance. “These important findings from TLI refined our breeding objectives, as we now focus on developing varieties combining deep roots and high plant biomass,” reveals Godwill Makunde (pictured), a bean breeder at Zimbabwe’s Crop Breeding Institute (CBI), which falls under the under the country’s Department of Research & Specialist Services. Zimbabwe is one the four target countries in Eastern and Southern Africa for GCP’s bean research (the other three being Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi).

From America to Africa…the heat is on, so is the battle…

The battle is on to beat the heat: through the project, CBI received 202 Mesoamerican and Andean bean breeding lines from the reference set collection held by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym). A ‘reference set’ is a sub-sample of existing germplasm collections that facilitates and enables access to existing crop diversity for desired traits, such as drought tolerance or resistance to disease or pests. The Institute also embarked on bringing in more techniques to breed for heat tolerance.

Kennedy Simango

Kennedy Simango

Drought, pests and disease
“We embraced mutation breeding in collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and we primarily look for heat tolerance in small-seeded beans,” says Kennedy Simango (pictured right and below), a plant breeder at CBI. “Preliminary results suggested that just like drought, the reproductive stages of common bean are when the crop is most sensitive to heat. Flower- and pod-drop are common. Yield components and yields are severely reduced. In addition, we also focus on developing pest- and disease-resistant varieties.”

 

Kennedy Simango at work a the Crop Breeding Institute.
Kennedy Simango at work a the Crop Breeding Institute.

The CBI project’s primary diseases and pests of focus are angular leaf spot (ALS), common bacterial blight (CBB), rust and bean stem maggot, and aphids. “This came from our realisation that drought co-exists with heat, diseases and pests,” Kennedy adds. “So, a variety combining drought, heat, disease and pest tolerance all together would increase common bean productivity under harsh environments or drought-prone areas.”

At first glance, piling up all these vital survival traits may appear insurmountable, but it is all feasible, thanks to advances in plant science. “Breeding methods are changing rapidly, and it is vital that we keep up with the technology,” says Kennedy.

The CBI team is using molecular breeding to identify drought-tolerant parents, and then cross them into preferred bean varieties to confer to the ‘offspring’ the best of both worlds – drought tolerance and market appeal.

All-round capacity and competence
GCP’s support does not stop at enabling access to breeding lines alone, or introduction to molecular breeding. “We got a lyophiliser, which is specialised equipment that enables us to extract DNA and send it for genotyping,” says Kennedy. “From the genotyping exercise, we hope to be able to trace the relationships among breeding lines so that we design better crossing programmes, and thereby maximise the diversity of our breeding lines. In addition, we hope to select recombinants carrying desirable genes in a short period of time, and at times without even needing to test them in the target environment.” GCP assists with genotyping through its Genotyping Support Service offered through the Integrated Breeding Platform.

For phenotyping, CBI has benefitted from a mobile weather station, a SPAD meter (for measuring chlorophyll content), a leaf porometer (for measuring leaf stomatal conductance) and water-marks (probes for measuring soil moisture).

Human resources have not been forgotten either. Godwill Makunde, a CBI bean breeder, is studying for a TLII-funded PhD in Plant Breeding at the University of the Free State, South Africa. A group of four scientists (Godwill and Kenedy,  plus Charles Mutimaamba, and Munyaradzi Mativavarira) are in GCP’s three-year Integrated Breeding Multi-Year Course (IB–MYC). The curriculum includes design of experiments, data collection, analysis and interpretation, molecular breeding and data management techniques. In addition, GCP also trains research technicians. For CBI, Clever Zvarova, Anthony Kaseke, Mudzamiri and Chikambure have attended this training. Their course also includes phenotyping protocols (data collection and use of electronic tablets in designing field-books). To date, CBI has received five tablets for digital data collection , of which two are outstanding.

Photo: CBI

Godwill doing what he does best: bean breeding.

Bringing it all together, and on to farms
But how relevant are all these breeder-focused R&D efforts to the farmer? Let’s review this in proper context: in the words of Mr Denis Mwashita, a small-scale farmer at the Chinyika Resettlement Scheme in Bingaguru, Zimbabwe, “Beans have always carried disease, but from the little we harvest and eat, we and our children have developed stomachs.”

“What Mr Mwashita means is that despite the meagre harvests, farm families fare better in terms of health and nutrition for having grown beans,” explains Godwill.

With this solid all-round support in science, working partnerships, skills and infrastructure, the CBI bean team is well-geared to breed beans that beat both heat and disease, thereby boosting yields, while also meeting farmer and market needs. Trials are currently underway to select lines that match these critical needs which are the clincher for food security.

“The Zimbabwe market is used to the sugar type, which is however susceptible to drought. We hope to popularise other more drought-tolerant types,” says Kennedy. “We plan to selected a few lines in the coming season and test them with farmers prior to their release. Our goal is to have at the very least one variety released to farmers by mid-2013.”

A noble goal indeed, and we wish our Zimbabwe bean team well in their efforts to improve local food security.

VIDEO: The ABCs of bean breeding in Africa and South America, with particular focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe

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Nov 292012
 
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By Gillian Summers

The TLI project lets us know about molecular breeding, so it’s exposed us to new developments in science, especially in the application of molecular techniques and plant breeding.”  Asrat Asfaw Amele, Southern Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopia

Many a tale about Ethiopia will regale the reader with details of its contrasting landscape, numerous rivers, searing regional temperatures, the multicultural makeup of its society, its world-famous, unbeatable long-distance and high-altitude runners, its rich history and culture; a sweet producer of honey, the home of coffee, and origin of all mankind…

Seeing red… but no blood
…I found a land of incurably hospitable and kind people, proud of their country and culture; infectiously good music, incredibly strong coffee, where they love both bloody raw meat and protein-rich red beans, dubbed ‘bloodless meat’ in this part of the world.

Cool early morning departure

Cool early morning departure

Out & about
My first real taste of Ethiopia was out in the countryside where I visited the work of GCP’s Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project in the field, on a trip to the bean fields at the Southern Agricultural Research Institute’s (SARI) research stations at Areka and Hawassa, which took us on a 600-km round tour, out of the capital Addis Ababa and into the Great Rift Valley beyond.

We set off early that cool morning, and as we headed into the countryside, I glimpsed many a local taking their first breath of morning air as they stepped outside from their decoratively-painted, round, thatched-roof homes, and shook the night’s sleep from their shoulders.

Traditional thatched living rooms

Traditional thatched living rooms

So their day began – already there was smoke coming from the chimneys, and I imagined the lady of the house beginning to prepare for the first coffee ceremony of the day. Coffee is often accompanied by a dish of boiled red beans. Or maybe she was warming the pan for the morning injera – a kind of ‘teff tortilla’: a sour-dough thin pancake made of the local cereal, teff. Injera is an iconic ubiquitous component of Ethiopian cuisine, with which diners take all manner of wat, or stew made from a rich variety of ingredients – from legumes to raw meat, carefully rolling the spongy crepe around the filling twice, making sure no food falls onto the fingers, for dining etiquette strictly dictates against the licking of fingers.

Ensete plantations

Ensete plantations

Living landscape

We pass score upon score of the gently-smoking thatched round huts – the traditional ‘living rooms’ in these parts; most dwellings are accompanied by modest smallholdings, with maybe a grazing goat or two, and many more with plantations of ensete – a banana-like plant, which, in spite of its inedible fruit, has long been a staple in Ethiopia. It is used for its root, which is mashed to make a tasty, stodgy, bread-like food called kocho, used to accompany meals, a denser cousin of the favourite injera. These smallholdings would also be the perfect size for cultivating beans, as they are not an acre-hungry crop, but grow happily on small plots of land, and in some areas are intercropped with ensete to maximise the space.

Dromedaries, drought and beans

Our common legume: the bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L

Our common legume: the bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L

Into this landscape we pass the incongruous addition of a herd or two of camels with their owners…significantly peculiar as these aren’t desert lands, but the edge of the Ethiopian highlands, gradually and graciously giving way to the majestic Great Rift Valley below. I ask my guide about the addition of camel hands to this highland scenery: he explains their strange presence is due to a growing food shortage which has forced these nomadic peoples further afield to find their fare. The appearance of these dromedaries and their human partners brings harshly to mind Ethiopia’s most notorious claim to fame – especially for anyone who recalls the mid-1980s – for whom Ethiopia will always be indelibly synonymous with famine. It also throws the work of GCP, and specifically TLI, sharply into the spotlight, for the over-arching objective of this project is to improve legume productivity in environments considered marginal for agriculture, due to heat and other stresses. Somehow, it seems that more of the world’s environment is becoming ‘stressed’ by the day, though luckily the giant beanstalk of our story is a hardy crop which can be grown on the poor soils and fragmented plots of these challenged lands.

L–R: Asrat Asfaw Amele (SARI), Bodo Raatz (CIAT), Daniel A Demissie

L–R: Asrat Asfaw Amele (SARI), Bodo Raatz (CIAT) and Daniel A Demissie (Areka Research Station) discuss the A–Z of beans at Areka Research Station.

So the legume of choice for this most uncommon road trip is the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L, and our Ethiopian bean breeding expert is Asrat Asfaw Amele of the Southern Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), who is the Lead Scientist of the TLI beans component in Ethiopia. Asrat is our friendly guide and fount of knowledge of all things Ethiopian throughout this impassioned passage into the ‘bean valley’, and we are accompanied by Bodo Raatz of the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), recently appointed Principal Investigator of TLI’s bean research. At Areka research station we are joined on our journey by Daniel A Demissie, who, along the way, shares his many insights on beans, diseases such as bean stem maggot (BSM), and on drought . We are chaperoned throughout by our courageous driver, Mr Abebe, who at times resembles a pilot as we seem to fly over the bumpy terrain in the plucky pick-up that is our steed for the day.

Courageous steeds

Courageous steeds: our driver, Mr Abebe (foreground and far right) and the intrepid pickup are joined by workers from Areka station

Impact

Asrat Afaw Amele

Asrat Afaw Amele

Against the scenic backdrop of the Ethiopian landscape racing by, with background music courtesy of Teddy Afro (whose politically charged songs, sweet voice and infectious rhythm have made him nothing short of a legend in his homeland), I take advantage of this long and winding road trip to interview Asrat, where his answers echo the whirlwind tour rushing by outside – from a description of the landscape he knows so well, and toils in every day – to the impact that this project has had on national scientists, the impacts on farmers’ lives, as well as impacts that are likely to come in the not-too-distant future.

We consider farmers our partners. We try to understand what farmers are looking for, what they like, and we try to include their interests in our breeding materials so that the breeding materials released by our institution start to get wider adoption.” – Asrat Asfaw Amele (pictured).

The rich Ethiopian landscape

The rich Ethiopian landscape

Revolution, alliances & partnerships

Ethiopia’s rich history, as varied as its topographical landscape, has known its fair share of extreme rulers. Now it seems the new ‘regime’ calling the shots is climate change, whose ravaging effects are seen worldwide, and no less in the bean fields of Ethiopia. Asrat even pinpoints climate change as the greatest challenge for the next generation of bean researchers, saying, “The farmers’ growing environment may be modified or a new environment may be created. That could also be a challenge – a new pest population or new disease may come; so the challenge in the future may be to breed or develop varieties which adapt to the changing environment.”

Beans line up

Beans line up at Awassa Research Station

The revolutionaries needed to overthrow this ‘tyrant’, it seems, are those of the ‘triple alliance’ partnership, comprising: Ethiopia’s national scientists, researchers from the international science community including CGIAR Centres, and farmers. Firstly, with this approach, the science sector can understand farmers’ needs, which also has a reciprocal effect, as Asrat explains, “We consider farmers our partners. We try to understand what farmers are looking for, what they like, and we try to include their interests in our breeding materials so that the breeding materials released by our institution start are widely adopted.” Secondly, national and international science systems come together to work for a common goal – in Asrat’s words: “Now we’ve got the knowledge and we can speak a common language with people from advanced laboratories. It’s also brought us closer to international institutes like CIAT and other CG Centres – we work together, so they understand our system better and we understand how they function.” He adds, “We are getting technical backstopping from CGIAR Centres, so as a national partner we are doing work, and they are supplying germplasm. That’s the partnership that will continue in the future.”

The weapon used by this ‘revolutionary army’ is GCP’s double-barrelled approach which combines both traditional and molecular breeding practices and is proving to be effective in developing new, more productive bean varieties to combat drought and disease. Specifically of the TLI project, Asrat says, “It lets us know about molecular breeding, so it’s exposed us to new developments in science, especially in the application of molecular techniques and plant breeding.”

Daniel A Demissie

Daniel A Demissie contemplates looming rain clouds across the parched terrain

The ‘monster’, climate change, rears its ugly head only to be shot down expertly by Asrat and the mighty beans as he reveals, “A lot of farmers are growing our varieties, and, because of changing weather or instability, many people are starting to grow beans; beans are now becoming a major crop, especially in our mandate area.”

Capacity building …
At this stage, the major impact of the TLI beans component in Ethiopia has been on capacity building – both in terms of human resources and physical infrastructure, as Asrat illustrates, “In our breeding programme, capacity building has been an important aspect: scientists in our national system are being exposed to new technology, information, and training; we also have a full irrigation system in about 10 hectares of land, which will revolutionise our work.”

Photo: N Palmer/CIAT

Magical bean diversity

… and on to farmers
By building on lessons learnt throughout this project, current impacts for the national science system will be translated into ‘real impacts’ in farmers’ fields in the near future. Indeed, Asrat hopes his future work will involve “getting the material into the hands of farmers, to see some impact or change, and to modernise and speed up breeding processes using markers developed by this project.”

Beanstalks. Photo: N Palmer/CIAT

Beanstalks: giant potential in Ethiopia

So the ‘magic beans’ of our story tell of a rich brew brimming with such potent ingredients as molecular breeding, capacity building, partnerships spanning continents and research systems, true teamwork with the farmers in the fields, and the drive to conquer the new challenge of a changing climate.

The impacts from the TLI project are the pot of gold at this rainbow’s end, showing that fairy tales do come true, where ‘magic beans’ put down roots and grow real shoots, and are not just ‘castles in the air’.

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Nov 132012
 
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Bean breeding in his bones: Asrat A Amele

For our bean team, we already see the benefits of being in the Tropical Legumes I  project. We now understand molecular breeding, and we are able to apply molecular breeding techniques.” – Asrat A Amele (pictured)

Asrat is a bean breeder at Ethiopia’s South Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) at the Awassa Research Centre.

Besides breeding beans that will better battle drought, Asrat’s team combines drought tolerance with resistance to the bean stem maggot (BSM) – a pest that afflicts all bean-growing zones in Ethiopia.

Connections, continuity and capacity building
The Tropical Legumes I (TLI) was not an entirely new connection, as Asrat’s involvement with GCP predates this particular project. He started off as a GCP-funded fellow in 2007, investigating bean genetics for drought tolerance. The fellowship would also seem him do a stint in Colombia at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture  (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym). His work at the time on root phenotyping and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis has since been published.

At that time, Asrat remarked:

The GCP fellowships programme is great for a person like me, working in a developing-country research institute. I can say it potentially provides researchers with up-to-date scientific knowledge in areas of specialisation. It provides better contact with scientists in other parts of the world and opens a wider window to think on problems and deliver better research products.”

Thorugh GCP, Asrat also attended a molecular breeding course at Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands. Wageningen is a GCP Consortium member.

The ravages wrought by bean stem maggot.

Having passed through that door of opportunity and looking back now, what does Asrat say? “Through TLI, we were able to access new parental sources of germplasm recommended for release and use for breeding. For instance, we’ve received more than 200 lines from CIAT, from which 10 have been selected to be used as parents. We plan to do crosses with these parents to develop a marker-assisted recurrent selection [MARS] population, based on the problems plaguing beans in Africa.”

And it’s not all about material but also matters cerebral (and matters manual, as we shall see further on): “From the science meetings we attend, we’ve also gained valuable new contacts and acquired new knowledge.” Asrat reveals.

Two…and two

Fitsum Alemayehu

Daniel Ambachew

The next step is to validate the workability of MARS, and SARI has a GCP-funded PhD student, Fistum Alemayehu (pictured right), registered at the South Africa’s Free State University and conducting his phenotyping in Ethiopia, alongside other well-trained staff that SARI now has. Fistum is working on marker-assisted recurrent selection for drought tolerance in beans, while Daniel Ambachew (pictured left), another GCP-funded MSc student enrolled at Haramaya University, Ethiopia, is evaluating recombinant inbred line populations and varieties for combined dual tolerance of drought and bean stem maggot.

Both students are using molecular breeding: “For this work, we’ll be using SNP* markers. It is probably the first use of bean SNPs in sub-Saharan Africa. We will now do QTL analysis with the bean population we have from CIAT,” reveals Asrat.

* SNP: (pronounced ‘snips’) is a technical term, and the abbreviation is derived from ‘single nucleotide polymorphism’ – an advanced molecular-marker system widely used in genetic science. You can read more about SNPs in this press release.

Of humans and machines

A training session on maintaining farm machinery.

Moving on to matters manual and mechanical, besides enhanced human resources, SARI has benefited from infrastructure support as part of GCP’s comprehensive capacity-building package: the Institute now has an irrigation system to enable them conduct drought trials, and SARI technicians from more than 20 different SARI stations have been trained in proper use and routine maintenance of farm machinery. SARI also received two automatic weather stations from GCP for high-precision climatic data capture, with automated data loading and sharing with other partners in the network.

Through this project, SARI is now well tuned into the international arena of bean research and development, and profiting in new ways from this exposure to growing international connections.

Water drilling to install irrigation equipment at SARI.

Institutional revolution and rebirth
The engagement with GCP has revolutionised bean breeding at SARI and institutionalised marker-assisted selection. As a result, SARI will soon have a small molecular breeding laboratory funded by another agency. This lab will support one more PhD student and an additional MSc student, both registered in Ethiopian universities and working on marker-assisted selection for beans.

Thus, in this southern corner of Ethiopia, bean breeders conversant in molecular methods will continue to be ‘born’, better-prepared and well-equipped to meet the challenges facing bean breeding today.

 

 

 

Asrat on video

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SLIDES: Phenotyping common beans for tolerance of drought and bean stem maggots in Ethiopia

 

Oct 302012
 
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BREAK-TIME AND BRAKE-TIME from beans for a bit: Steve Beebe takes a pause to strike a pose in a bean field.

“These [molecular breeding] techniques, combined with conventional methods, shorten the time it takes to breed improved varieties  that simultaneoulsy combine several traits.

And this means that we also get them out to farmers more quickly compared to phenotypic selection alone.”
– Steve Beebe

THE NEAR-PERFECT FOOD: Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L) comprise the world’s most important food legume, feeding about 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Their nutritional value is so high, they have been termed ‘a near-perfect food’. They are also easy to grow, adapting readily to different cropping systems and maturing quickly.

That said, this otherwise versatile, adaptable and dapper dicotyledon does have some inherent drawbacks and ailments that crop science seeks to cure….

Rains are rapidly retreating, and drought doggedly advancing
Despite the crop’s widespread cultivation in Africa, “yields are low, stagnating at between 20 and 30 percent of their potential,” remarks Steve Beebe, GCP’s Product Delivery Coordinator for beans, and a researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym).

“The main problem is drought, brought about by climate change,” he says. “And it’s spreading – it already affects 70 percent of Africa’s major bean-producing regions.”  Drought decimates bean harvests in most of Eastern Africa, but is particularly severe in the mid-altitudes of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe, as well as in southern Africa as a whole.

A myriad of forms and hues: bean diversity eloquently speaks for itself in this riot of colours.

Drought, doubt and duality − Diversity a double-edged sword
“Common beans can tolerate drought to some extent, using various mechanisms that differ from variety to variety,” explains Steve. But breeding for drought resistance is complicated by the thousands of bean varieties that are available. They differ considerably according to growth habit, seed colour, shape, size and cooking qualities, and cultivation characteristics.

“A variety might be fantastic in resisting drought,” says Steve, ‘but if its plant type demands extra work, the farmers won’t grow it,” he explains. “Likewise, if consumers don’t like the seed colour, or the beans take too long to cook, then they won’t buy.”

Molecular breeding deals a hand, waves a wand, and weaves a band
This is where molecular breeding techniques come in handy, deftly dealing with the complexities of breeding drought-resistant beans that also meet farmer and consumer preferences. No guesswork about it: molecular breeding rapidly and precisely gets to the heart of the matter, and helps weave all these different ‘strands’ together.

The bean research team has developed ‘genetic stocks’, or strains of beans that are crossed with the varieties favoured by farmers and consumers. The ‘crosses’ are made so that the gene or genes with the desired trait are incorporated into the preferred varieties.

The resulting new varieties are then evaluated for their performance in different environments throughout eastern and southern Africa, with particular focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe which are the target countries of the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project.

Propping up the plant protein: a veritable tapestry of terraces of climbing beans.

GCP supported this foundation work to develop these molecular markers. This type of breeding – known in breeder parlance as marker-assisted selection (MAS) – was also successfully used to combine and aggregate resistance to drought; to pests such as bean stem maggot (BSM); and to diseases such as bean common mosaic necrosis potyvirus (BCNMV) and to bruchid or common bacterial blight (CBB). The resulting ‘combinations’ laden with all this good stuff were then bred into commercial-type bean lines.

“These techniques, combined with conventional methods, shorten the time it takes to breed improved varieties that simultaneoulsy combine several traits,” comments Steve. “This means that we also get them out to farmers more quickly compared to phenotypic selection alone.”

Informed by history and reality
Breeding new useful varieties is greatly aided by first understanding the crop’s genetic diversity, and by always staying connected with the reality on the ground: earlier foundation work facilitated by GCP surfaced the diversity in the bean varieties that farmers grow, and how that diversity could then be broadened with genes to resist drought, pests and disease.

What next?
Over the remaining two years of Phase II of the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project, the bean team will use the genetic tools and breeding populations to incorporate drought tolerance into farmer- and market-preferred varieties. “Hence, productivity levels on smallholder farms are expected to increase significantly,” says Steve.

Partnerships
The work on beans is led by CIAT, working in partnership with Ethiopia’s South Agricultural Research Institute (SARI),  the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI),  Malawi’s Department of Agricultural Research and Technical Services (DARTS) and  Zimbabwe’s Crop Breeding Institute (CBI) of the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DR&SS).

Other close collaborators include the eastern, central and southern Africa regional bean research networks (ECABREN and SABRN, their acronyms) which are components of the Pan-African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA). Cornell University (USA) is also involved.

VIDEO: Steve talks about what has been achieved so far in bean research, and what remains to be done

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