Li Ling specializes in the breeding of legume crop species, focusing particularly on the genetic diversity of edible pea germplasm resources. For over a decade, she has managed and conducted plant breeding programs for edible beans in Liaoning Province, China; having succesfuly selected and released 4 superior new vegetable pea varieties in the country. In recent years, she has begun collaborating with scientists Dr. Jeff Paull from the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine; and Dr. Robert Redden from the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) in Victoria, Australia, on bean germplasm exchange projects between China and Australia.

Ling’s fellowship with Bioversity aimed to complement a previous Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project that collected pea and faba bean landraces in the provinces of Qinghai and Yunnan in China. China has roughly 1400 pea varieties, and the two countries have often shared pea diversity to boost their breeding programmes. Prior to Li Ling’s research however, numerous information gaps remained on climate and soil data of the different collection sites, such as rainfall and frost patterns, availability of irrigation and soil salinity levels. Knowledge of such data would enable a better understanding of species’ responses to biotic and abiotic stress, as well as provide the tools necessary for developing better pea varieties for farmers. Li Ling’s fellowship was based in Australia, where she worked in cooperation with the Australian Temperate Field Crops Collection (ATFCC) and the Biosciences Research Division of DPI Victoria. A paper based on the study’s results: “Eco-geographic analysis of pea collection sites from China to determine potential sites with abiotic stresses” will be published in the journal Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution (GRACE) in the near future.

Ling is currently an Associate Professor and the Pea Breeder Coordinator of the Chinese Edible Beans Industry Technical System Program at the Liaoning Institute of Cash Crop, Liaoning Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shenyang, China.