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Plant genetic resources are a live treasury of both one country and the whole mankind, although their ex situ preservation and in situ conservation are very demanding in numerous ways, especially if human resources and financial issues are considered. Legumes (Fabaceae Lindl.) are facing the bottlenecks caused by breeding emphasizing yield and quality, raising the questions how to solve the issue of this narrowing the genetic basis of cultivated legume species. The reintroduction of neglected and underutilised crops, such as red vetchling (Lathyrus cicera), Cyprus vetchling (Lathyrus ochrus), French serradella (Ornithopus sativus), Ethiopian pea (Pisum abyssinicum), field pea (Pisum sativum var. arvense), fenugreek (Trigonella phoenum-graecum), bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia), Narbonne vetch (Vicia narbonensis), Hungarian vetch (Vicia pannonica) and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) may significantly assist many contemporary farming systems by diversifying their needs and improve the efficiency of environment resources.

The genetic resources of legumes (Fabaceae Lindl.) are facing the narrowing the genetic basis of cultivated species, that is bottlenecks of the available gene pools. This is caused mostly by breeding, since it aims at improving yield and quality. The most widely cultivated crops are in a specific danger of losing numerous desirable traits due to a heavy selection pressure preferring usually yield. Using locally cultivated and maintained landraces of the economically most important annual legumes, such as chickpea (Cicer arietinum), lentil (Lens culinaris), grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), white lupin (Lupinus albus) and faba bean (Vicia faba) may assist breeding and various modern crop systems. They preserved numerous desirable traits that may be easily introgressed into modern cultivars and thus improve their performance.

This review is attempting to present the wild relatives of cool season annual legumes and thus hopefully answer to how and what these taxa, colloquially said, have to offer to the cultivated crops, in terms of yield, quality, stress resistance and other economically important issues. They represent a wide gene pool of various desirable traits, especially those related to abiotic and biotic stress resistance that may be introgressed into the advanced cultivars, with overcoming potential physiological or genetic barriers. The wide mutual variations of the most important characteristics may be extremely beneficial for the advanced cultivars due to numerous bottlenecks and their narrow genetic base. If considered from a wider point of view, wild relatives of cool season annual legumes represent not only a national or regional treasury, but also a tool to improve the modern agriculture to the benefit of the whole mankind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]