Common bacterial blight (CBB), caused by Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli and Xanthomonas fuscans subsp. fuscans (Xff), is a worldwide disease of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Longyundou 5, a Chinese cultivar in the Mesoamerican gene pool of common bean, displays resistance to the Xff strain XSC3-1. To identify the genetic mechanisms behind this resistance, we crossed Long 5 with a susceptible genotype to develop a mapping population of F₂ plants. Plant resistance to CBB was identified at 14 and 21 days after inoculation with Xff strain XSC3-1. A major QTL at 14 and 21 days after inoculation was mapped on chromosome Pv10 with LOD scores of 6.41 and 5.35, respectively. This locus was associated with SAP6, a previously-identified and much-used dominant marker, but in a 4.2 cM interval between new codominant markers BMp10s174 and BMp10s244. Ten candidate genes were found between markers BMp10s174 and BMp10s244 on chromosome Pv10 and could encode defense response proteins responding to CBB pathogens. Four pairs each of epistatic QTL for CBB resistance were detected at 14 and 21 days after inoculation. Phenotypic variation explained by the epistatic QTL ranged from 7.19% to 12.15% and 7.72% to 8.80% at 14 and 21 days after inoculation, respectively. These results confirmed the importance of epistasis in CBB resistance in common bean. The adjacent markers found may be more efficient for marker assisted selection in common bean breeding for CBB resistance owing to their closer linkage to the target QTL.

Powdery mildew, caused by Erysiphe pisi D.C., is an important disease of pea (Pisum sativum L.). The use of cultivars carrying powdery mildew resistance alleles at the er1 locus is the most effective and economical means of controlling this disease. The objectives of this study were to screen Chinese elite pea cultivars for resistance to E. pisi and to identify the responsible gene at the er1 locus. Among the 37 pea cultivars tested, three (Yunwan 8, Yunwan 21, and Yunwan 23) were immune to E. pisi infection in phenotypic evaluations. The full-length cDNA sequences of the er1 candidate gene, PsMLO1, from the three resistant cultivars and control plants were analyzed. Comparison of the cDNA sequences of 10 clones revealed differences among the powdery mildew-resistant cultivars, susceptible controls, and wild-type cultivar Sprinter. The observed resistance in Yunwan 8 plants resulted from a point mutation (C → G) at position 680 of PsMLO1 that introduced a stop codon, leading to premature termination of protein synthesis. The responsible resistance allele was identified as er1-1. Powdery mildew resistance in Yunwan 21 and Yunwan 23 plants was caused by identical insertions or deletions in PsMLO1. Three distinct PsMLO1 transcripts were observed in Yunwan 21 and Yunwan 23 plants. These transcripts were characterized by a 129-bp deletion and 155- and 220-bp insertions, respectively. The responsible resistance allele was identified as er1-2. We have characterized two important er1 alleles in three E. pisi-resistant pea cultivars bred in Yunnan Province, China. These cultivars represent important genetic resources for the breeding of powdery mildew-resistant pea cultivars.

Bruchid beetle (Callosobruchus chinensis) poses a serious threat to the production and storage of mung bean (Vigna radiata). Mapping bruchid resistance (Br) will provide an important basis for cloning the responsible gene(s) and elucidating its functional mechanism, and will also facilitate marker-assisted selection in mung bean breeding. Here, we report the construction of the genetic linkage groups of mung bean and mapping of the Br1 locus using an RIL population derived from a cross between Berken, a bruchid-susceptible line, and ACC41, a bruchid-resistant line. A total of 560 markers were mapped onto 11 linkage groups, with 38.0% of the markers showing distorted segregation. The lengths of the linkage groups ranged from 45.2 to 117.0 cM with a total coverage of 732.9 cM and an average interval of 1.3 cM between loci. Br1 was located on LG9 between BM202 (0.7 cM) and Vr2-627 (1.7 cM). Based on 270 shared SSR markers, most of the linkage groups were assigned to specific chromosomes. These results should further accelerate the genetic study of this crop.

Drought stress linked with climate change is one of the major constraints faced by common bean farmers in Africa and elsewhere. Mitigating this constraint requires the selection of resilient varieties that withstand drought threats to common bean production. This study assessed the drought response of 64 small red-seeded genotypes of common bean grown in a lattice design replicated twice under contrasting moisture regimes, terminal drought stress and non-stress, in Ethiopia during the dry season from November 2014 to March 2015. Multiple plant traits associated with drought were assessed for their contribution to drought adaptation of the genotypes. Drought stress determined by a drought intensity index was moderate (0.3). All the assessed traits showed significantly different genotypic responses under drought stress and non-stress conditions. Eleven genotypes significantly (P ≤ 0.05) outperformed the drought check cultivar under both drought stress and non-stress conditions in seed yielding potential. Seed yield showed positive and significant correlations with chlorophyll meter reading, vertical root pulling resistance force, number of pods per plant, and seeds per pod under both soil moisture regimes, indicating their potential use in selection of genotypes yielding well under drought stress and non-stress conditions. Clustering analysis using Mahalanobis distance grouped the genotypes into four groups showing high and significant inter-cluster distance, suggesting that hybridization between drought-adapted parents from the groups will provide the maximum genetic recombination for drought tolerance in subsequent generations.

As a cool-season crop, pea (Pisum sativum L.) can tolerate frost at the vegetative stage but experiences yield loss when freezing stress occurs at the reproductive stage. Cold-tolerance improvement of pea varieties is important for stable yield and expansion of the winter pea planting area. Under natural low-temperature conditions during winter in Qingdao, Shandong, China, we evaluated the cold tolerance of 3672 pea germplasm accessions in the field and categorized them as displaying high resistance (214), moderate resistance (835), or susceptibility (2623). The highly and moderately resistant genotypes were validated in the following year. We found that genotypes from the winter production region showed higher cold tolerance than genotypes from the spring production region. The accessions identified as having high levels of cold tolerance are recommended as potential genetic resources in cold-tolerance breeding of pea.

As a typical compatible solute, proline is accumulated in plants under environmental stresses. Proline transporter (ProT) plays an important role in proline distribution between plant organs. Using a candidate gene approach, we cloned a cDNA sequence for ProT from common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and designated the gene PvProT. The deduced amino acid sequence of PvProT showed high similarity to Bet/ProT proteins from other leguminous plants, and the highest similarity was observed with mothbean (Vigna aconitifolia L.) VuProT. Relative quantification of the mRNA level of PvProT using real-time PCR analysis showed that the PvProT transcript level was higher in leaves than in stems and roots of common bean plants subjected to drought and salt stress. Under 20% (w/w) PEG-6000 treatment, drought-resistant plants expressed a higher level of PvProT transcripts than drought-sensitive plants. Although heterologous expression of PvProT in the Escherichia coli mutant mkh13 showed that PvProT exhibited uptake activities for proline and betaine, no betaine content was detected in the common bean. These findings suggest that PvProT plays an important role in the transportation of proline in common bean plants exposed to drought and salt stress.

Information about the type of gene action governing the inheritance of cowpea seed flavonoid content and antioxidant activity is prerequisite for starting an effective breeding program for developing improved varieties. For this purpose, half-diallel crosses among seven diverse parents were made. The homozygous parents and 21 F₁ hybrids were evaluated at Maroua in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Cameroon using a randomized complete block design with three replicates. Flour samples produced from decorticated seeds were used for biochemical analysis. Analysis of variance showed significant differences (P < 0.001) among genotypes for the studied traits with ranges of 363.6-453.9 mg rutin equivalent per 100 g dry weight (DW) for total flavonoids, 13.38-30.73 mg ascorbic acid equivalent per 1 g DW for ferric iron reducing activity, 70.98-266.93 mg trolox equivalent per 100 g DW for 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity, and 90.93-370.62 mg trolox equivalent per 100 g DW for 2,2′-azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) free radical scavenging activity. Both additive and non-additive gene effects were significant in the genetic control of these traits, but dominance variance was greater than additive variance. The traits were mainly controlled by overdominance model suggesting a selection in the delayed generations. Broad- and narrow-sense heritability estimates varied from 0.90 to 0.99 and from 0.12 to 0.45, respectively. The variances due to both general and specific combining ability were highly significant for all studied traits. Recessive alleles had positive effects on DPPH and ABTS scavenging activities, whereas dominant alleles had positive effects on flavonoid content and ferric iron reducing activity. These results could help cowpea breeders to improve the antioxidant potential of cowpea seeds by appropriate selection.

Interest in mung bean (Vigna radiata L.) as a functional food is growing; however, studies on the nutritional composition of major mung bean cultivars planted in China are limited. Twenty Chinese mung bean cultivars were collected and their nutritional compositions including starch, fat, protein, and phytochemicals were analyzed. The cultivars were found to have a high amount of resistant starch, accounting for 16.1%-22.3% of total starch, and balanced amino acid constitutions. Palmitic acid and linoleic acid were the two dominant fatty acids, accounting for respectively 32.4% and 36.1% of all of the assayed fatty acids. Four bound phenolic acids (syringic, caffeic, p-coumaric, and ferulic acids) and two free phenolic acids (caffeic and ferulic acids) were identified by HPLC. The antioxidant activity of 70% ethanol extracts from the 20 mung bean cultivars was evaluated. Their DPPH and ABTS⁺ free-radical-scavenging capacity ranged from 28.13 ± 2.24 to 35.68 ± 0.71 μmol g^{− 1} and from 3.82 ± 0.25 to 13.44 ± 1.76 μmol g^{− 1}, respectively. Significant positive correlations of ABTS⁺ free-radical-scavenging capacity with total phenolic acids and total flavonoid contents were observed. These results suggest that Chinese mung bean cultivars are rich in balanced nutrients and that their phytochemicals should be considered as potential sources of natural antioxidants.

Grass pea offers an attractive choice for sustainable food production, owing to its intrinsic properties including limited water requirement and drought tolerance. However, low productivity and the presence of a neurotoxin (ODAP) have posed major obstacles to its genetic improvement. Also, biotechnological investments remain limited and the genome is complex and not well understood. Strategies that allow identification of genotypes with reduced ODAP content, coupling of low ODAP content with enhanced yield, and effective seed detoxification methods merit immediate attention. Breeder-friendly genomic tools are being increasingly made available to improve the efficiency of breeding protocols. To this end, the application of next-generation sequencing has provided a means of leveraging the repertoire of genomic resources for this somewhat neglected crop. In this review, we describe progress achieved in Lathyrus genetic improvement. We also explore potential opportunities in Lathyrus research and identify urgent research needs.

Chickpea is the third most important pulse crop as a source of dietary protein. Ever-increasing demand in Asian countries calls for breeding superior desi-type varieties, in turn necessitating the availability of characterized germplasm to breeders. The Indian National Genebank, located at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, conserves 14,651 accessions of chickpea. The entire set was characterized in a single large-scale experiment. High variation was observed for eight quantitative and 12 qualitative agro-morphological traits. Allelic richness procedure was employed to assemble a core set comprising 1103 accessions, 70.0% of which were of Indian origin. Comparable values of total variation explained by the first three principal components in the entire collection (51.1%) and the core (52.4%) together with conservation of nine pairwise r values among quantitative traits in the core collection and a coincidence rate around 99.7% indicated that the chickpea core was indeed an excellent representation of the entire chickpea collection in the National Genebank. The chickpea core exhibited greater diversity than the entire collection in agro-morphological traits, as assessed by higher variance and Shannon-Weaver diversity indices, indicating that the chickpea core maximized the phenotypic diversity available in the Indian chickpea germplasm. The chickpea core, comprising mainly indigenous desi genotypes, is expected to be an excellent resource for chickpea breeders. Information on the chickpea core can be accessed at http://www.nbpgr.ernet.in/pgrportal.

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.), a diploid (2n = 14) with a genome size greater than 4000 Mbp, is an important cool season food legume grown worldwide. The availability of genomic resources is limited in this crop species. The objective of this study was to develop polymorphic markers in lentil using publicly available curated expressed sequence tag information (ESTs). In this study, 9513 ESTs were downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database to develop unigene-based simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The ESTs were assembled into 4053 unigenes and then analyzed to identify 374 SSRs using the MISA microsatellite identification tool. Among the 374 SSRs, 26 compound SSRs were observed. Primer pairs for these SSRs were designed using Primer3 version 1.14. To classify the functional annotation of ESTs and EST-SSRs, BLASTx searches (using E-value 1 × 10^{− 5}) against the public UniProt (http://www.uniprot.org/) and NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlh.nih.gov/) databases were performed. Further functional annotation was performed using PLAZA (version 3.0) comparative genomics and GO annotation was summarized using the Plant GO slim category. Among the synthesized 312 primers, 219 successfully amplified Lens DNA. A diverse panel of 24 Lens genotypes was used to identify polymorphic markers. A polymorphic set of 57 markers successfully discriminated the test genotypes. This set of polymorphic markers with functional annotation data could be used as molecular tools in lentil breeding.