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Review
. 2023 Jun 16:14:1193780.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1193780. eCollection 2023.

Exploiting genetic and genomic resources to enhance productivity and abiotic stress adaptation of underutilized pulses

Sangam L Dwivedi  1 , Mark A Chapman  2 , Michael T Abberton  3 , Ufuoma Lydia Akpojotor  3 , Rodomiro Ortiz  4
Affiliations
Review

Exploiting genetic and genomic resources to enhance productivity and abiotic stress adaptation of underutilized pulses

Sangam L Dwivedi et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

Underutilized pulses and their wild relatives are typically stress tolerant and their seeds are packed with protein, fibers, minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals. The consumption of such nutritionally dense legumes together with cereal-based food may promote global food and nutritional security. However, such species are deficient in a few or several desirable domestication traits thereby reducing their agronomic value, requiring further genetic enhancement for developing productive, nutritionally dense, and climate resilient cultivars. This review article considers 13 underutilized pulses and focuses on their germplasm holdings, diversity, crop-wild-crop gene flow, genome sequencing, syntenic relationships, the potential for breeding and transgenic manipulation, and the genetics of agronomic and stress tolerance traits. Recent progress has shown the potential for crop improvement and food security, for example, the genetic basis of stem determinacy and fragrance in moth bean and rice bean, multiple abiotic stress tolerant traits in horse gram and tepary bean, bruchid resistance in lima bean, low neurotoxin in grass pea, and photoperiod induced flowering and anthocyanin accumulation in adzuki bean have been investigated. Advances in introgression breeding to develop elite genetic stocks of grass pea with low β-ODAP (neurotoxin compound), resistance to Mungbean yellow mosaic India virus in black gram using rice bean, and abiotic stress adaptation in common bean, using genes from tepary bean have been carried out. This highlights their potential in wider breeding programs to introduce such traits in locally adapted cultivars. The potential of de-domestication or feralization in the evolution of new variants in these crops are also highlighted.

Keywords: Orphan legumes; diversity assessment; gene flow; genes; introgression; nutrition; phenomics; quantitative trait loci.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Synteny view between cowpea and adzuki bean (A), mung bean (B) and common bean (C) [taken from Lonardi et al., 2019 (CC BY 4.0)].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

Stiftelsen för strategisk forskning (SSF, Sweden) through EUa21-0021 project EU Horizon Europé Research Application Support Boosting Legume Breeding provided funding for open access publication of this article.

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