The pea lines are descendants of an inbred population of plants derived from an ARS cross made in 1993 between the cultivar Dark Skin Perfection and germplasm line 90-2131. Besides their tolerance of Aphanomyces root rot, the lines were also chosen for their acceptable agronomic characteristics.
They make it sound so easy, don’t they, in the USDA press release? But then you realize that 1993 was twenty years ago. And that “germplasm line 90-2131” is PI 557501, which has a bit of a pedigree itself:
{[(Small Sieve Freezer/C-165) / (Early Perfection 3040 / C-165) / PH-91-3] / 74SN4 / PI 180693}
And that you can parse that pedigree:
Line C-165 is a University of Wisconsin selection resistant to fusarium wilt (Race 1 and 2). PH-91-3 (Reg. no. GP-11) and 74SN4 (GP-17), released by the USDA-ARS, are fusarium root rot and fusarium wilt resistant. PI 180693 is resistant to A. euteiches. Line 90-2131 is resistant-to-tolerant to fusarium and aphanomyces root rot, both in pure culture tests and in the field. This line is also resistant to Races 1, 5, and 6 and segregating for Race 2 of fusarium wilt.
And that Small Sieve Freezer and Perfection were local US varieties dating back to at least the fifties. And, digging further, that PI 180693 is Hohenheimer Pink-Flowered, which the original USDA plant introduction book reveals was one of a big batch of seeds that came from Germany in 1949:
From Germany. Seeds presented by the Biparte Control Office, Food, Agriculture, and Forestry Group, Frankfurt. Received Apr. 20, 1949.
Quite a backstory to our promising new little pea line. If people understood that a bit better, maybe they’d understand better why something like the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is needed. And why you need genebanks. 1 And that if you’re going to want varieties able to grow in what climatic conditions will be like twenty years hence, you’d better start now. But try and put all that into a press release.
