Genetics of economic traits.

Abstract

Although lentil is among the most prominent grain legumes globally, its economic position strengthened significantly when it became important in international trade about two decades ago. This, coupled with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), focused attention on the crop as its world mandate, served as a stimulus for enhanced research in the area of genetics, breeding and biotechnology. This chapter deals with the genetics of characters showing discrete, identifiable and contrasting phenotypes. The inheritance of morphological traits (growth habit, red foliage, light green foliage, leaflet shape, size and number, tendril formation, plant pubescence, plant height, globe mutant, stem fasciation, stipule size, flowering time, flower colour, number of flowers per peduncle, pod size, pod dehiscence, seed coat colour, tannin in seed coat, seed coat spotting, seed size, hardseededness, cotyledon colour), protein content, abiotic stresses (frost injury, drought tolerance, soil factors), disease resistance, and alloenzyme variation. Cytogenetics studies on lentil are discussed.

Common Vetch (Vicia sativa L.) Germplasm: Correlations of Crude Protein and Mineral Content to Seed Traits

“…In our study, CP content was significantly and negatively correlated (r= −0.17**) with seed weight. In general, associations between CP content and seed weight have been found to be absent or weakly negative in grain legumes [25][26][27][28] and in Cajanus x Atylosia crosses [29]. These results clearly demonstrate that the relationships between seed weight and mineral and CP content vary across species and are mostly nonsignificant in grain legumes.…”

“…Protein content is almost universally negatively correlated with seed size, particularly in the cereals. However, this principle does not seem to apply to the grain legumes [25]. In our study, CP content was significantly and negatively correlated (r= −0.17**) with seed weight.…”

Grain Legumes

“…In 1928, Tschermak observed a 3:1 ratio of red/orange to yellow cotyledons in reciprocal crosses between these types and reported that red/orange was dominant over yellow (Sharma 2007). In this report, it was noted that orange seed from heterozygous F 1 plants was indistinguishable from orange seed from homozygous plants.…”

“…The consensus presently is that there are four testa color classes: black, brown, grey, and green (Sharma 2007). Black testa color is controlled by one locus with either codominance (Vandenberg and Slinkard 1990) or a dosage effect (Emami and Sharma 2000; Sharma et al 2004) that causes heterozygotes to be difficult to assigned to a discrete class.…”

“…However, this difference with soybean is due to the substantially higher fat content of soybean (Gebhardt and Thomas 2002). Protein content in lentil is the highest among food legumes consumed without industrial processing (Sharma 2009). Protein in lentil can range from 21.4 to 25.5 % (Rasheed et al 2010).…”