NORFAB: Protein for the Northern Hemisphere

Like other EU countries Denmark is a net importer of protein, mainly soybean-meal from the US and South America. The imported protein is crucial for sustaining a large livestock production and also represents an important food ingredient. The challenge is to increase domestic protein production and maintain global competitiveness while improving agricultural diversity and sustainability. We propose to address this challenge by genomics-based breeding of improved Vicia faba (faba bean) cultivars and introduction of these as competitive protein crops, thereby creating growth and jobs through the establishment of a major new agricultural product line. Faba bean cultivation on 100.000 ha of the Danish farmland is a realistic first target. The vision is to build a consortium of Northern hemisphere players, NORFAB with the critical mass and key expertise required to develop sophisticated genomics-based plant breeding methods and provide access to germplasm with the relevant genetic diversity. NORFAB will improve the yield and quality of faba bean seeds to a level making faba bean a competitive protein crop cultivated on up to 10 % of the arable farmland under northern European and Canadian/US northern prairie conditions. With collaborators from Denmark, UK, Finland and Canada, NORFAB integrates faba bean research and breeding in this target area.