Abstract. Pion induced reactions give unique opportunities for an unambiguous description of baryonic resonances and their coupling channels. A systematic energy scan and high precision data, in conjunction with a partial wave analysis, allow for the study of the excitation function of the various contributions. A review of available world data unravels strong need for modern facilities delivering measurements with a pion beam. Recently, HADES collaboration collected data in pion-induced reactions on light ( 12 C) and heavy ( 74 W) nuclei at a beam momentum of 1.7 GeV/c dedicated to strangeness production.
Probing baryon resonancesOne of the key issues in the research of nature over the years was the investigation of baryon resonances, i.e. short-lived excited states of nucleons. From experimental point of view a resonance manifests as a peak located around a certain energy in differential cross section. Its composite nature is probed in scattering experiments and is characterized not only by the complex pole position of the scattering amplitude but also by the couplings to the various channels and hence decay branching ratios. Particularly the important region of 1-2 GeV is occupied by light-flavoured baryons. Such baryons are built out of three quarks (u, d, s) with possible spin either 1/2 or 3/2. Accounting for orbital motion, a supermutiplet SU (6) ) lies in the fact that missing states can couple weakly to the Nπ channel, which is a predominant source of knowledge about baryon properties. Additional difficulty stems from the fact that resonance spectral functions are usually quite broad and various resonances overlap. This challenge triggered great experimental effort resulting in collection of high precision and quality data in meson photo-and electroproduction [6]. In contrary