This award will support Dr. Thomas Lumpkin of Washington State University to collaborate with Dr. Michiharu Kobayashi for 17 months at Kyoto University, Japan. They will work on characterizing accessions of the azuki bean (Vigna angularis). The project will entail: 1) Bringing together samples of all 2000+ accessions in major Japanese collections together with accessions from Korea and China currently at Washington State University; 2) Creation of a subset of accessions based on pod shatter resistance and bacterial stem rot tolerance, and classification and cataloging of this subset based on vegetative features and classical taxonomic criteria; and 3) Use of isozyme profiles to identify (fingerprint) accessions in the subset. This cooperative project will provide Dr. Lumpkin access to the azuki bean collections, together with the resources of Kyoto University, the Japanese National Institute of Agrobiological Resources at Tsukuba, and the Tokachi Agricultural Experiment Station in Hokkaido, Japan. Azuki is an important legume crop. This project has the potential of providing critical background information for increasing production potential in both the U.S. and Japan.
