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Food legumes comprise all legumes grown for human food in China as either dry grains or vegetables, except for soybean and groundnut. China has a vast territory with complex ecological conditions. Rotation, intercropping, and mixed cropping involving pulses are normal cropping systems in China. Whether indigenous or introduced crops, pulses have played an important role in Chinese cropping systems and made an important contribution to food resources for humans since ancient times. The six major food legume species (pea, faba bean, common bean, mung bean, adzuki bean, and cowpea) are the most well-known pulses in China, as well as those with more local distributions; runner bean, lima bean, chickpea, lentil, grass pea, lupine, rice bean, black gram, hyacinth bean, pigeon pea, velvet bean, winged bean, guar bean, sword bean, and jack bean. China has remained the world's leading producer of peas, faba beans, mung beans, and adzuki beans in recent decades, as documented by FAO statistics and China Agriculture Statistical Reports. The demand for food legumes as a healthy food will markedly increase with the improvement of living standards in China. Since China officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, imports of pea from Canada and Australia have rapidly increased, resulting in reduced prices for dry pea and other food legumes. With reduced profits for food legume crops, their sowing area and total production has decreased within China. At the same time, the rising consumer demand for vegetable food legumes as a healthy food has led to attractive market prices and sharp production increases in China. Vegetable food legumes have reduced growing duration and enable flexibility in cropping systems. In the future, production of dry food legumes will range from stable to slowly decreasing, while production of vegetable food legumes will continue to increase.

Association panels represent a useful tool for quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping and pre-breeding. In this study, we report on the development of a European and Mediterranean chickpea association panel as a useful tool for gene discovery and breeding. Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important food legumes worldwide and a key crop in the Mediterranean environments. The selection of genotypes followed criteria aimed to build a set of materials representative of the genetic diversity of chickpea germplasm focusing on the European and Mediterranean environments, which have largely been ignored to date. This tool can help breeders to develop novel varieties adapted to European and Mediterranean agro-ecosystems. Initially, 1931 chickpea accessions were phenotypically evaluated in a field trial in central Italy. From these, an association panel composed by 480 genotypes derived from single-seed descent was identified and phenotypically evaluated. Current and future phenotypic data combined with the genotypic characterization of the association panel will allow to dissect the genetic architecture of important adaptive and quality traits and accelerate breeding. This information can be used to predict phenotypes of unexploited chickpea genetic resources available in genebanks for breeding.

Ambient temperatures are predicted to rise in the future owing to several reasons associated with global climate changes. These temperature increases can result in heat stress- a severe threat to crop production in most countries. Legumes are well-known for their impact on agricultural sustainability as well as their nutritional and health benefits. Heat stress imposes challenges for legume crops and has deleterious effects on the morphology, physiology, and reproductive growth of plants. High-temperature stress at the time of the reproductive stage is becoming a severe limitation for production of grain legumes as their cultivation expands to warmer environments and temperature variability increases due to climate change. The reproductive period is vital in the life cycle of all plants and is susceptible to high-temperature stress as various metabolic processes are adversely impacted during this phase, which reduces crop yield. Food legumes exposed to high-temperature stress during reproduction show flower abortion, pollen and ovule infertility, impaired fertilization, and reduced seed filling, leading to smaller seeds and poor yields. Through various breeding techniques, heat tolerance in major legumes can be enhanced to improve performance in the field. Omics approaches unravel different mechanisms underlying thermotolerance, which is imperative to understand the processes of molecular responses toward high-temperature stress.

Storage insect pests cause significant losses of food legumes particularly in the Tropics and the Sub-tropics. The most important species of storage insect pests of food legumes include Callosobruchus chinensis , C. maculatus , C. analis , Acanthoscelides obtectus , Bruchus incarnatus , B. rufimanus , B. dentipes , B. quinqueguttatus , B. emarginatus , B. ervi , B. lentis and B. pisorum . Effective post-harvest insect pest control measures should constitute part of the overall crop husbandry practices for preserving the quality of produce. Storage insect pests are commonly controlled using chemical insecticides which, however, bear many drawbacks related to high cost, environmental pollution and food safety risks. Breeding legume crops to improve their resistance against storage insect pests, although having technical limitations, is the best way of overcoming these disadvantages in an environment-friendly manner. In this paper, we present the findings of our extensive reviews on the potential of breeding resistant varieties of food legumes against storage insect pests along with the major technical limitations one would likely encounter and the prospective ways of tackling them.

Background: Both lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) and grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) in the family Fabaceae are two important cool-season food legumes, often experiencing water stress conditions during growth and maturity. Objective: The present study was undertaken to ascertain the response of these two crops under different water stress regimes. Materials and Methods: Different morpho-physiological and biochemical parameters were studied in a pot experiment under controlled environmental conditions. Along with control (proper irrigation, 0 stress), three sets of plants were subjected to mild (6 d), moderate (13 d) and severe (20 d) water stress by withholding irrigation at the appropriate time. Results: Compared with control, plant growth traits and seed yield components reduced significantly in both crops with increasing period of water stress, resulting in lowering of dry mass with more severe effect on lentil compared with grass pea. Foliar Relative Water Content (RWC) (%), K + /Na + ratio, chlorophyll (chl) a, chl a/b ratio, stomatal conductance and net photosynthetic rate declined considerably in both crops under water stress. Leaf-free proline level increased significantly in both crops, but it decreased markedly in nodules of lentil and remained unchanged in grass pea. Nodulation was also affected due to water stress. The impairment in growth traits and physio-biochemical parameters under water stress was manifested in reduction of drought tolerance efficiency of both crops. Conclusion: Impact of water stress was more severe on lentil compared with grass pea, and modulation of growth traits signified necessity of a detailed strategy in breeding of food legumes under water stress.

Legume cultivation is strongly hampered by the occurrence of Ascochyta blights. Strategies of control have been developed but only marginal successes have been achieved. In the present paper we present and re-evaluate some recent developments in control in the light of recent developments in crop breeding and molecular genetics. The current focus in applied breeding is leveraging biotechnological tools to develop more and better markers to speed up the delivery of improved cultivars to the farmer. To date, however, progress in marker development and delivery of useful markers has been slow. The application of knowledge gained from basic genomic research and genetic engineering will contribute to more rapid crop legume improvement for resistance against Ascochyta blight., Financial support by Spanish project AGL2008-01239 is acknowledged.

Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are sedentary, obligate endoparasites in plants, where they induce specialized feeding sites. The feeding sites act as strong metabolic sinks to which photosynthates are mobilized. The histopathological modifications in the nematode-induced feeding sites of artificially inoculated chickpea cv. UC 27 were qualitatively and quantitatively compared using five isolates of M. artiellia and one isolate each of M. arenaria, M. incognita, and M. javanica. All Meloidogyne isolates infected chickpea plants, but root gall thickening was significantly less for M. artiellia isolates than for the other Meloidogyne species. Nevertheless, neither the number of giant cells in the feeding site (averaging four to six) nor the area of individual giant cells was influenced by nematode species or isolate. However, the number of nuclei per giant cell was significantly smaller, and the maximum diameters of nuclei and nucleoli were significantly greater, in giant cells induced by M. artiellia isolates than in those induced by M. arenaria, M. incognita, or M. javanica. In a second experiment, M. artiellia-induced giant cells in faba bean and rapeseed also contained a small number of large nuclei.

8 pages, 5 figures.-- PMID: 18943038 [PubMed].-- Available Open Access at the publisher site., Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are sedentary, obligate endoparasites in plants, where they induce specialized feeding sites. The feeding sites act as strong metabolic sinks to which photosynthates are mobilized. The histopathological modifications in the nematode-induced feeding sites of artificially inoculated chickpea cv. UC 27 were qualitatively and quantitatively compared using five isolates of M. artiellia and one isolate each of M. arenaria, M. incognita, and M. javanica. All Meloidogyne isolates infected chickpea plants, but root gall thickening was significantly less for M. artiellia isolates than for the other Meloidogyne species. Nevertheless, neither the number of giant cells in the feeding site (averaging four to six) nor the area of individual giant cells was influenced by nematode species or isolate. However, the number of nuclei per giant cell was significantly smaller, and the maximum diameters of nuclei and nucleoli were significantly greater, in giant cells induced by M. artiellia isolates than in those induced by M. arenaria, M. incognita, or M. javanica. In a second experiment, M. artiellia induced giant cells in faba bean and rapeseed also contained a small number of large nuclei., This research was supported by grant AGL2003-00640 from Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT), Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain.