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Climate change and global warming are the foremost anthropogenically accelerated catastrophes that are already causing world-wide challenges, but threaten to thwart global food, environmental and nutritional security in the future. Climate change affects ecosystem services and interactions between biotic and abiotic factors. The most drastic consequences have been observed in the agricultural and livestock sector, with diminished production and productivity potential. Agriculture and allied sectors contribute markedly to the production of greenhouse gases; however, integrated management practices can be used to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and its adverse impacts. Forage crops and their wild relatives maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services and minimise the drastic effects of climate change. Forage crops adapted to harsh environments have certain unique features such as perenniality, deep root system, high resource-use efficiency (light, nutrients and water), and low production of methane and N2O, making them suitable for future use under climate change. This review highlights the prominent features of various cultivated and rangeland forage crops that may be crucial to understanding impacts of climate change. We discuss the wild relatives of forage crops, which are often adapted for multiple stresses, and highlight their mechanisms for adaptation under climate change. We consider the advanced breeding and biotechnological tools useful for developing climate-smart forage crops. This review provides novel insight into forage crops and their wild relatives in terms of their exploitation in future stress breeding programmes and paths for developing climate-resilient crops. Climate change substantially affects the global food, environmental and nutritional security, as well as biodiversity and ecosystem services. Wild relatives of forage crops and their functional trait diversity can be exploited for future stress breeding programs and development of climate-resilient crops. Forage crops could be used to curtail emission of greenhouse gases and improve resource-use efficiency (light, nutrients and water) in degraded land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tropical Grasslands / Forrajes Tropicales is the property of International Centre for Tropical Agriculture - CIAT and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The genetic diversity among ninety five accessions of winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L.) DC.) belonging to six countries of African and Asiatic origin was detected by employing amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of nuclear ribosomal DNA markers. A medium to low-level of genetic diversity exists among the accessions of P. tetragonolobus. Association between the AFLP markers and flower, pod and seed traits: days to 50% flowering (DFW), pod length (PDL), pod width (PDW), green pod length (GPL), number of pods per plant (PDSP), number of seeds per pod (SDPD), 100 seed weight (SWT) and seed-oil content (SOC) was carried out by employing the mixed linear model (MLM) based kinship matrix (K-model). Traits like SOC and PDW were found to be strongly associated with AFLP markers. Population structure analysis among the genotypes identified five discrete sub-populations among the studied African and Asiatic lines of P. tetragonolobus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eighty two accessions of indigenous grass pea germplasm belonging to seven Indian states viz., Maharashtra (69), Bihar (4), West Bengal (4), Himachal Pradesh (2), Gujarat (1), Odisha (1) and Madhya Pradesh (1) were used for diversity analysis using DIVA-GIS. Morphological variability was observed in qualitative traits such as leaf size (small/medium), plant colour (light green/dark green), pod pigmentation (green/ pigmented) and seed coat colour (greyish white/yellow white /grey/ grey mottle). Variation was observed in number of primary branches per plant (3.4- 7.6), number of seeds per pod (2.25-5.00) and 100 seed weight (3.68-8.53g) with moderate coefficient of variation. Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that the trait plant height negatively correlated with days to flowering (p-value = 0.0001) and seed weight demonstrated positive and significant correlation with days to maturity (p value < 0.0001). High Shannon diversity index value of 2.5-4.0, 1.12-2.0, 2.16- 3.00 and 2.4-4.0 recorded for the traits plant height, maturity, pod length and test seed weight respectively for the grass pea accessions sourced from Maharashtra state followed by West Bengal. The Ward's minimum variance dendogram generated for the quantitative traits indicated that the presence of two major groups at 0.55 Euclidean distances (Semi-partial R-squared value). Potential areas for germplasm collection for specific traits viz., plant height, test seed weight, number of primary branches and number of seeds per pod were identified using DIVA-GIS analysis. Based on GIS analyses, suitable conservation strategies for grass pea genetic resources have also been explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tropical Ecology is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sixty five accessions of grass pea germplasm of eastern Vidarbha region of Maharashtra revealed wide variability in morphological characteristics. Shannon diversity index varied from 0.2711 to 1.1433 among the accessions. Moderate CV was observed for plant height (19.58%), 100 seed weight (14.82%), number of primary branches (14.07 %) and number of seeds per pod (13.94 %). Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that the pod length demonstrated positive and significant correlation with seeds per pod and days to maturity was highly and significantly correlated with test seed weight (P < 0.0001). Cluster analysis indicated two major clusters. Promising Lathyrus genotypes were identified for test weight (IC-345448) and number of primary branches per plant (IC 120463). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]