Pea is an important food and feed crop and a valuable component of low-input farming systems. Improving resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses is a major breeding target to enhance yield potential and regularity. Genomic selection (GS) has lately emerged as a promising technique to increase the accuracy and gain of marker-based selection. It uses genome-wide molecular marker data to predict the breeding values of candidate lines to selection. A collection of 339 genetic resource accessions (CRB339) was subjected to high-density genotyping using the GenoPea 13.2K SNP Array. Genomic prediction accuracy was evaluated for thousand seed weight (TSW), the number of seeds per plant (NSeed), and the date of flowering (BegFlo). Mean cross-environment prediction accuracies reached 0.83 for TSW, 0.68 for NSeed, and 0.65 for BegFlo. For each trait, the statistical method, the marker density, and/or the training population size and composition used for prediction were varied to investigate their effects on prediction accuracy: the effect was large for the size and composition of the training population but limited for the statistical method and marker density. Maximizing the relatedness between individuals in the training and test sets, through the CDmean-based method, significantly improved prediction accuracies. A cross-population cross-validation experiment was further conducted using the CRB339 collection as a training population set and nine recombinant inbred lines populations as test set. Prediction quality was high with mean Q2 of 0.44 for TSW and 0.59 for BegFlo. Results are discussed in the light of current efforts to develop GS strategies in pea.

Seed weevils (Bruchus spp.) are major pests of faba bean, causing yield losses, and affecting marketability. Our objective was to identify stable sources of resistance to seed weevil attacks, determine the climatic factors that most influenced its incidence and its relationship with some phenological and agronomic traits. The accessions “BOBICK ROD115,” “CÔTE D’OR,” “221516,” and “NOVA GRADISKA” showed increased resistance to penetration and development of larvae. Other accessions such as “QUASAR,” “109.669,” and “223303” exhibited resistance to larval development. The results of this work suggest the presence of different defense mechanisms to seed weevils in faba bean, which in the future could be introgressed in elite cultivars to create resistant varieties and contribute to more sustainable agriculture with less need for pesticides. The temperature, rainfall, and humidity seemed to be the climatic factors most influencing faba bean seed weevil attack while the precocity and the small weight of the seeds were correlated with lower infestation rates in the different experiments.