The present study was conducted to assess the morphophysiological and biochemical responses during different developmental stages in mungbean varieties subjected to drought stress, and to screen the varieties for drought tolerance. A field experiment was performed according to a completely randomized design on 25 mungbean varieties with 3 replicates per variety. Stress treatment was applied at 3 levels: control (no stress), vegetative stage (25 days after sowing), and reproductive stage (35 days after sowing). According to combined analysis of variance, there were significant effects from drought stress on relative water content (RWC), membrane stability index (MSI), protein and proline content of leaves, leaf area, plant height, and yield traits. MSI, RWC, protein content, leaf area, plant height, and yield traits were decreased during drought stress, while proline content was increased under drought stress conditions. The results showed that the vegetative stage was more sensitive to drought stress, which was further supported by correlation analysis. Taken together, Vigna sublobata, MCV-1, PLM-32, LGG-407, LGG-450, TM-96-2, and Sattya varieties were identified as drought tolerant as they maintained the higher values of RWC, MSI, protein, proline content, leaf area, plant height, and yield traits. These varieties could be used in breeding programs for better physiological drought tolerance traits.

Mungbean is a widely cultivated grain legume in Asia, Africa and South America. In this study, 52 varieties of mungbean were profiled with 39 polymorphic SSR primers after screening a total 315 SSR primers. A total of 96 alleles were scored from the 39 primers with an average of 2.46 alleles per locus indicating the low diversity among varieties. The Nei's genetic diversity index and the Shannon information index of SSR primers varied from 0 to 0.649 and 0 to 1.169, respectively. The results showed that the potential transferability of adzuki bean primers (83.3%) was greater than the cowpea primers (25%). The varieties profiled were grouped into four major clusters. But the clustering pattern did not reflect on their geographical origin. Further, the AMOVA indicated presence of moderate genetic differentiation among groups compared to higher differentiation among varieties within populations. The SSR markers identified here will add valuable genomic resources for germplasm characterization, cultivar identification and assessment of genetic diversity of mungbean varieties.

Among several abiotic stresses, heat stress has a large negative impact upon agricultural productivity worldwide. Moth bean (Vigna aconitifolia (Jacq.) Marechal) attracts a great deal of attention due to its better performance under drought and heat stress conditions. An experiment was designed to find out the effects of heat stress on relative water content (RWC), membrane stability index (MSI), and proline, protein, and chlorophyll (Chl) contents using 10 genotypes of moth bean. Physiological and biochemical parameters indicated that RMO 40 followed by Jadia, IC 36157, Jwala, and Marumoth were heat-tolerant (HT) genotypes, and IC 121051, IC 36392, IC 39702, IC 472257, and IC 140725 were heat-susceptible (HS) genotypes of moth bean. Under heat stress, the HT genotypes showed minimal reduction in RWC, MSI, and protein as compared to the susceptible ones, revealing that the HT genotypes performed well under heat stress. Many heat shock proteins and dehydration proteins are synthesized in plants under heat stress. Expression analysis of three such genes was performed in ten genotypes of moth bean. The analysis revealed that the HT genotypes showed better performance under stress conditions for survival. The above studied parameters would be very useful in the identification of HT varieties for future breeding programs in moth bean and related Vigna species.

Moth bean is the most drought and heat tolerant cultigens among Asian . We performed comparative transcriptome analysis of moth bean cultivar "Marumoth" under control and stress condition. De novo transcriptome assembly was carried out by using Velvet followed by Oases softwares. Differential expression analyses, SSR identification and validation and mapping of pathways and transcription factors were conducted. A total of 179,979 and 201,888 reads were generated on Roche 454 platform and 48,617,205 and 45,449,053 reads were generated on ABI Solid platform for the control and stressed samples. Combined assembly from Roche and ABI Solid platforms generated 16,090 and 15,096 transcripts for control and stressed samples. We found 1287 SSRs and 5606 transcripts involved in 179 pathways. The 55 transcription factor families represented 19.42% of total mothbean transcripts. In expression profiling, ten transcripts were found to be up-regulated and 41 down-regulated while 490 showed no major change under moisture stress condition. Stress inducible genes like Catalase, Cyt P450 monooxygenase, heat shock proteins (HSP 90 and HSP 70), oxidoreductase, protein kinases, dehydration responsive protein (DRP), universal stress protein and ferridoxin NADH oxidoreductase genes were up-regulated in stressed sample. Genes which might be involved in moisture stress tolerance in moth bean were identified and these might be useful for stress tolerance breeding in moth bean and other related crops.

Mungbean Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek var. radiata is vital grain legume having nutritional and socioeconomic importance, especially in the developing countries. We performed whole genome resequencing of three accessions representing the wild progenitor species, released and landrace of mungbean to identify SNPs with relevance to genetic relationships analyses. Approximately 9.3 million raw reads were obtained by using Ion Torrent PGM™ platform and more than 92% of the reads were mapped to the reference mungbean genome. We identified a total of 233,799 single nucleotide polymorphisms in relation to the reference genome (SNPs: 103,341 in wild, 93,078 in released and 37,380 in landrace accessions) and 9,544 insertions and deletions (InDels: 4,742 in wild, 3,608 in released and 1,194 in landrace accessions) in the coding and non-coding regions. In all accessions, genomic variants were unevenly distributed within and across the mungbean chromosomes. Among these 5,339; 4,739 and 1,795 SNPs were non-synonymous in 815, 790 and 317 genes of wild, released and landrace accessions, respectively. These polymorphisms might contribute to the