Genetic Diversity and Breeding Strategies for Improving Yield in Legumes

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Breeding and Genetics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2024 | Viewed by 1087

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Plant Development Genetics Group–DEVOLEG. Misión Biológica de Galicia-CSIC, P.O. Box 28, 36080 Pontevedra, Spain
Interests: legumes; common bean; adaptation; flowering; diversity; genetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Misión Biológica de Galicia-CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS, Carballeira 8, Salcedo, 36143 Pontevedra, Spain
Interests: genetic resources; resistance; plant breeding; biotic and abiotic stress
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Legumes are a vital source of food for humans and animals due to their high protein and essential amino acid content. Furthermore, legume crops help to reduce weed infestation and soil erosion, enhance organic matter, improve the nutrient status of soil, fix atmospheric nitrogen, and reduce soil pollution, thus being linked to sustainable agriculture. Improved sustainability can be achieved by identifying and providing germplasm to the legume breeding community, enabling increased productivity and reduced consumption of natural resources. To ensure the efficient use of legume crops, genetic resources, including landraces, wild relatives, and pre-breeding lines, need to be explored and developed. Moreover, advances in genomics resources can facilitate the evolution of legume crops with enhanced yields via the introgression/pyramiding of related gene(s)/QTLs through molecular breeding approaches. This Special Issue encourages legume breeders to share their multidisciplinary, integrated, and participatory research on biotechnology, plant breeding, plant physiology, and crop protection, with the aim of identifying superior genotypes that can be deployed in legume breeding programs.

This Special Issue will host both review articles and original research articles covering both traditional breeding approaches and the use of modern genomics-assisted breeding methods.

Dr. Ana María González
Dr. Margarita Lema
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • legumes
  • breeding
  • diversity
  • high yield
  • adaptation

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

19 pages, 1884 KiB  
Article
Cross-Species Transferability of SSR Markers for Analyzing Genetic Diversity of Different Vicia species Collections
by María Isabel López-Román, Lucía De la Rosa, Teresa Marcos-Prado and Elena Ramírez-Parra
Agronomy 2024, 14(2), 326; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy14020326 - 02 Feb 2024
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Abstract
Legumes play an essential role in sustainable agriculture due to their ability to fix nitrogen and high protein content. Vicia is a relevant genus of the Fabaceae family that includes important crop species, such as V. faba and V. sativa, but also [...] Read more.
Legumes play an essential role in sustainable agriculture due to their ability to fix nitrogen and high protein content. Vicia is a relevant genus of the Fabaceae family that includes important crop species, such as V. faba and V. sativa, but also other species considered minor crops. They are mainly used as animal feed and usually cope resiliently with extreme conditions; therefore, they could play an essential role in sustainable agriculture under the present scenario of climate change and growing population. However, the scarcity of commercial cultivars limits their use. The Spanish National Plant Genetic Resources Center has collections of several species of the genus Vicia, including international landraces, which could be an essential source of biodiversity for breeding programs. These seed resources are underutilized due to the limited availability of characterization data, including the lack of molecular markers for these species. In this study, we analyzed the cross-transferability of SSR (simple sequence repeat) molecular markers from V. sativa and V. ervilia to distinct species of the genus Vicia. We also used heterologous validated markers for the genotypic characterization and genetic diversity analysis of almost 500 accessions of three undercharacterized Vicia collections: V. articulata (one-flower vetch), V. ervilia (bitter vetch), and V. narbonensis (narbon bean or French vetch). Subsequently, these molecular data were integrated with passport and agromorphological data to select representative varieties from these Vicia collections and establish core collections, with minimum loss of genetic diversity versus the Spanish total collections. The characterization of these legume collections is an essential step from an economic and ecological point of view to obtain selected Vicia varieties to be used in sustainable agriculture. Full article
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