Species of the genus Lathyrus L. are known as forage and medicinal plants, widely used in traditional medicine and homeopathy. The content of protein, essential amino acids and carotene in their green biomass is higher than in other annual leguminous plants traditionally cultivated in Russia. Until now, the requirements for the crop's quality were reduced to a high content of protein and dry matter in seeds and herbage. In-depth biochemical analysis of accessions from the collection of plant genetic resources will significantly improve selection of source materials for breeding. Such tasks can be solved using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry in plant diversity studies. In view of the above, our goal was to analyze organic acids, free amino acids and secondary metabolites in green biomass of Lathyrus to facilitate comprehensive assessment of its forage and pharmacological value. We analyzed 32 accessions of Lathyrus sativus L., L. tuberosus L., L. sylvestris L., L. vernus (L.) Bernh., L. latifolius L. and L. linifolius (Reichard) Bassler from the collection of the Vavilov Institute (VIR). The studied Lathyrus accessions had significant interspecific and intraspecific variability both in the composition (presence) and number of the identified compounds. The analysis of plants across different years confirmed that biochemical parameters depended on weather conditions. The colder and drier conditions of 2012 contributed to the accumulation of organic acids (mean: 890 mg/100 g), free amino acids (mean: 201.59 mg/100 g), and secondary metabolites (mean: 84.14 mg/100 g). The range of variability for organic acids ranged from 140 to 2140, for free amino acids from 11.8 to 610, and for secondary metabolites from 4.4 to 224.6 mg/100 g. Grass pea accessions with high organic acid, free amino acid and secondary metabolite contents were identified: k-900 (Colombia) for organic acids (2140, 610 and 178 mg/100 g); k-51 (Georgia) and k-959 (Afghanistan) for free amino acids (401.29 and 540.63 mg/100 g); k-893 (Eritrea) for secondary metabolites (199.39 mg/100 g), etc. They can serve as source material for the development of cultivars for different uses (forage and medicinal).

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Nutrition is a source of energy, and building material for the human organism. The quality of food has an effect on the quality of individual life. Minerals and vitamins participate in various catalytic and regulatory functions of the main metabolic processes: absorption, transport, redox and biosynthesis of organic compounds, genetic information transfer, etc. Regular consumption of dietary fibers like β-glucans and oat-specific phenolics, antioxidants, and avenanthramides, stimulate innate and acquired immunity, prevent cancer, obesity, reduce glucose, total cholesterol and triglyceride blood levels and regulate the expression of cholesterol-related genes. Thus, all those compounds are vitally important for the normal functional status of the human body. A deficiency in one or another essential nutrient causes disruptions in human metabolism, thus leading to serious illnesses. Plants are the main source of essential nutrients that are bioavailable for humans. One of the most popular groups of staple crops are the small grains crops (SGC), so these crops are most often used for biofortification purposes. Exploiting the potential of plant resources, biofortification is a long-term strategy, aimed at increasing the number of essential micro- and macronutrients in major food sources and ensuring their bioavailability. The most productive way to implement such strategy is the active use of the possibilities offered by collections of plant genetic resources, including SGC, concentrated in various countries of the world. The collections of plant resources contain both cultivated plants and their wild relatives that possess the required composition of micro- and macronutrients. A complex scientific approach to studying plant germplasm collections, together with agricultural practices (soil enrichment with fertilizers with a required composition), genetic biofortification (traditional breeding, marker-assisted selection or genetic engineering tactics), and their combinations will lead to the development of new biofortified cultivars and improvement of old ones, which can be used to solve the problems of unbalanced nutrition (malnutrition or hidden hunger) in different regions of the world.

UDC 546.682.54~131In recent years, indium oxide is finding practical applications [1-3]o Under reducing conditions, the chemical composition of indium oxide is subjected to changes (with respect to the oxygen content) [4,5]. Defect formation occurs in its lattice. In poly~ crystalline indium oxide specimens, a deviation from the stoichiometric composition affects their structural and electrophysical properties [6,7]. The available publications on the structural and electrophysical properties of polycrystalline indium oxide do not delineate the reasons for the phase transformations in its structure.This paper deals with a study* of the structural and electrophysical properties of polycrystalline indium oxide specimens during the process of heating in air in the 25-1600~ range and in vacuum in the 25-I000~ range.Specimens weighing 1.8-2.0 g and measuring 5 • 5 x 20 mm were made from "ultrapure" indium oxide using the hot pressing method. The optimum pressure regimes were selected according to the published data [8]~The specimens were studied under CUKa-radiation using a DRON-0,5 diffractometer. Indium oxide specimens were studied using the high-temperature x-ray diffraction method in the 25-IIO0~ range in air and in vacuum. The heating rate was 10~ and the duration of holding the specimens at a fixed temperature was 20 min. The lattice parameters of the cubic phases of indium oxide were determined (error • nm) from a plot of the profiles of the (400) and (622) lines. The lattice parameters of monoc!inic and hexagonal modifications of indium oxide were determined with an error of • nm,When heating the specimens in air, measurement of the electrical resistivity was simultaneously carried out using a special attachment to the diffractometer; the measurement was based on the change in the voltage when adc current of 10-15 mA is passed through the specimens. For this purpose, holes were drilled in the end faces of the prismatic specimens for *The author is grateful to Yu. A. Mal'tsev and V. L. Markov for the help rendered in carrying out the experiments.

Small radish and radish are economically important root crops that represent an integral part of a healthy human diet. The world collection of Raphanus L. root crops, maintained in the VIR genebank, includes 2810 accessions from 75 countries around the world, of which 2800 (1600 small radish, 1200 radish) belong to R. sativus species, three to R. raphanistrum, three to R. landra, and four to R. caudatus. It is necessary to systematically investigate the historical and modern gene pool of root-bearing plants of R. sativus and provide new material for breeding. The material for our research was a set of small radish and radish accessions of various ecological groups and different geographical origin, fully covering the diversity of the species. The small radish subset included 149 accessions from 37 countries, belonging to 13 types of seven varieties of European and Chinese subspecies. The radish subset included 129 accessions from 21 countries, belonging to 18 types of 11 varieties of European, Chinese, and Japanese subspecies. As a result of the evaluation of R. sativus accessions according to phenological, morphological, and biochemical analyses, a wide variation of these characteristics was revealed, which is due to the large genetic diversity of small radish and radish of various ecological and geographical origins. The investigation of the degree of variation regarding phenotypic and biochemical traits revealed adaptive stable and highly variable characteristics of R. sativus accessions. Such insights are crucial for the establishment and further use of trait collections. Trait collections facilitate germplasm use and contribute significantly to the preservation of genetic diversity of the gene pool.