PeaBoost and Pea4Ever at ILS5: protein pea at the heart of international scientific exchanges

From June 8 to 12, 2026, the PeaBoost team took part in the 5th International Legume Society Conference (ILS5), in Dubrovnik, Croatia. An oral presentation of the Pea4Ever program, three scientific posters and numerous exchanges with partner teams filled these five days.

An international forum for legume research

The International Legume Society Conference is one of the leading international events in legume research. It brings together researchers, technical institutes and breeding companies around the scientific advances and agronomic challenges of these species. For PeaBoost, this edition was a first opportunity to present the Pea4Ever program to the international scientific community and to discuss its initial progress there.

Pea4Ever presented in an oral session

David Gouache, Pea4Ever project manager within the PeaBoost GIE, presented the program and its ambition: restoring the competitiveness of protein pea through massive investment in genetic progress and accelerated breeding, in the service of yield potential and its consistency.

This presentation set out the originality of the Pea4Ever framework, which is based on pooling the genetic resources, tools and expertise of three breeding companies, in partnership with public research and the sector's organizations. It also recalled the target trajectory: making new varieties available to farmers within a timeframe of seven to eight years, instead of the ten to fifteen years usually required in varietal improvement.

Three posters to share the first advances

PeaBoost's presence also took the form of three scientific posters, presenting the program's first results and the methods developed with its partners:

• Streamlining pea genetic resources into commercial plant breeding: first results from Pea4Ever program, devoted to mobilizing pea genetic resources within commercial breeding programs;
• High-Throughput Phenotyping at the Scale of a Pea Breeding Program Using UAV-Based Imaging, produced with Hiphen, on high-throughput phenotyping (large-scale characterization of plant behavior in the field) using drone imaging applied to a pea breeding program;
• Varietal and Seasonal Effects on Functional, Sensory, and Applicative Properties of Pea Protein Isolates, produced with Terres Inovia, on varietal and seasonal effects on the functional, sensory and applicative properties of pea protein isolates.

This work illustrates the rationale of the program's start-up phase: building the protocols, datasets and evaluation capacities that will make the varietal gains of the coming years possible.

Strengthened exchanges with partner teams

ILS5 was also an opportunity to consolidate the collaborations under way around Pea4Ever:

• with the University of Córdoba and IAS-CSIC in Spain, and in particular Diego Rubiales, on new sources of resistance to Aphanomyces (the soil-borne fungus responsible for pea root rot), to bruchid beetles and to aphids;
• with UM6P, with Moez Amri and Kamal Hejiaoui, on the screening (assessment of plant material) and phenotyping platform set up in Morocco;
• with Hiphen, with Nicolas Bras, on high-throughput phenotyping approaches;
• as well as with Terres Inovia and INRAE, long-standing partners of the program.

Beyond the scientific presentations, these days made it possible to open new discussions with current and potential partners, to explore avenues of collaboration on innovative topics and to bring forward new thinking for the next steps of the program.

Building on the exchanges

What remains now is to make the most of these meetings: consolidating the ideas shared, defining the collaborations envisaged and drawing full value from them to accelerate the momentum built around protein pea. These exchanges will feed into the work of the coming months, as the program continues to roll out its evaluation and breeding facilities.

PeaBoost thanks the ILS5 organizers, its partners and all the teams it met for the quality of the scientific exchanges.