Warm Season Grain Legume Landraces From the South of Europe for Germplasm Conservation and Genetic Improvement

Abstract

Currently, there is a high concern from consumers regarding food quality, with emphasis on the origin of food sources. We here review the current situation of beans (Phaseolus spp.) and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) landraces in the South of Europe focusing on morpho-agronomic and genetic diversity and physiological adaptation to the different agrosystems, including the symbiotic association with rhizobia. Despite the reduction in the production and consumption of grain legumes in Southern Europe, the variability of common bean, runner bean and cowpea landraces in this region is adequately preserved ex situ in germplasm banks and in breeder collections in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece; however, on-farm (in situ) conservation in isolated areas mainly in gardens and small fields for farmers own consumption and local markets is not guaranteed. This variability can be used for the genetic improvement of varieties, which will result in environmental-friendly improved legumes for a sustainable production in the South of Europe as well as in other regions of the World.

Iberian Peninsula cowpea diversity: chloroplast, microsatellite and morpho-agronomic variability

“…Recently, there has been a focus on the characterization of southern European cowpea germplasm from Greece (Lazaridi et al, 2017), Italy (Lioi et al, 2019) and the Iberian Peninsula (Carvalho et al, 2016Martos-Fuentes et al, 2017) as the Southern Europe climate conditions are adequate to its production and this grain legume is much consumed in this region. Southern European cowpeas are considered important nutritional and environmental resources, well adapted to their agrosystem, and with a natural tolerance for water scarcity conditions and high temperatures, though they should be genetically preserved and improved for their efficient use De Ron et al, 2018). At the level of genetic diversity, there have thus far been few studies of cowpea using material from Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, as in our study, and the most recent study uses SNP (Carvalho, Muñoz-Amatria ın, et al, 2017).…”

The Brazilian lima bean landraces: conservation and breeding

“…A cluster analysis was performed using the UPGMA method , based on Rogers' distances (1972), modi ed by Wright (1978), to determine the genetic relationships between accessions using the program NTSYS (Rohlf 1989). The stability of the clusters was tested using the bootstrap procedure based on 10,000 resamples using the program TFPGA (Miller 1997).…”

Life story of Tunisian durum wheat landraces revealed by their genetic and phenotypic diversity

“…As a result, they are related to the biological, historical, cultural and socio-economic contexts where they have been grown over generations (Conversa & al, 2020), and are specifically well adapted to the environmental conditions of their cultivation area (i.e. tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses) (De Ron & al., 2018;A.C. Zeven, 1998).…”

“…Zeven, 1998). In conclusion, there is a strong paradox between the loss of landraces being replaced by high yielding modern varieties and the necessity for breeding programs to preserve intraspecific diversity to develop innovative varieties and hybrids (De Ron & al., 2018;Govindaraj & al., 2015;Hammer & Diederichsen, 2009). This statement is particularly relevant to durum wheat.…”