Identification of novel genes associated with herbicide tolerance in Lentil (Lens culinaris ssp. culinaris Medik.).

Weeds pose a major constraint in lentil cultivation, leading to decrease farmers' revenues by reducing the yield and increasing the management costs. The development of herbicide tolerant cultivars is essential to increase lentil yield. Even though herbicide tolerant lines have been identified in lentils, breeding efforts are still limited and lack proper validation. Marker assisted selection (MAS) can increase selection accuracy at early generations. Total 292 lentil accessions were evaluated under different dosages of two herbicides, metribuzin and imazethapyr, during two seasons at Marchouch, Morocco and Terbol, Lebanon. Highly significant differences among accessions were observed for days to flowering (DF) and maturity (DM), plant height (PH), biological yield (BY), seed yield (SY), number of pods per plant (NP), as well as the reduction indices (RI) for PH, BY, SY and NP. A total of 10,271 SNPs markers uniformly distributed along the lentil genome were assayed using Multispecies Pulse SNP chip developed at Agriculture Victoria, Melbourne. Meta-GWAS analysis was used to detect marker-trait associations, which detected 125 SNPs markers associated with different traits and clustered in 85 unique quantitative trait loci. These findings provide valuable insights for initiating MAS programs aiming to enhance herbicide tolerance in lentil crop.

Experimental on-farm trials data of faba bean and wheat intercropping field validation in Lebanon and Morocco.

This data paper describes the content of four datasets collected by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as a partner in the project "Designing InnoVative plant teams for Ecosystem Resilience and agricultural Sustainability (DIVERSify)" with the objective of assessing the feasibility of faba bean-wheat mixture in Mediterranean environments under diverse rainfed conditions. Data was collected during the trials conducted in Kfardan-Lebanon during 2017/2018 where 40 faba bean varieties were evaluated as sole and as mixture with 2 wheat cultivars 'Margherita' and 'Miki' and during 2018/2019 where 40 faba bean varieties and one durum wheat cultivar 'Margherita' were evaluated under low rainfall environments. Trials were also conducted in Tal Amara-Lebanon during 2019/2020 where 20 faba bean lines and one durum wheat cultivar 'Margherita' were evaluated under high rainfall environments and in Marchouch-Morocco during 2019/2020 where 7 faba bean lines with 3 cultivars and one durum wheat cultivar 'Margherita' were evaluated under extremely low rainfall environments. A detailed list of the different biological traits collected for wheat and faba bean is found in the specification table in this article. The Kfardan 2018/ 2019, Tal Amara and Marchouch data is related to the conference paper "Performance of faba bean-wheat mixture under diverse Mediterranean environments" [1].