Biology And Breeding Of Food Legumes

Food legumes are important constituents of the human diet and animal feed where they are crucial to a balanced diet, supplying high quality proteins. These crops also play an important role in low-input agricultural production systems by fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Despite systematic and continuous breeding efforts through conventional methods, substantial genetic gains have not been achieved. With the rise in demand for food legumes/pulses and increased market value of these crops, research has focused on increasing production and improving the quality of pulses for both edible and industria.

More than 20 million childhood deaths occur every year due to the micronutrient deficiency and diet-related non-communicable diseases (cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes). The United Nations (UN) recently announced that the increase in chronic, non-communicable diseases has resulted in 36 million deaths around the world annually, claiming more lives than all other causes combined. These chronic diseases are not isolated to developed countries and are even more pronounced in the developing world. Such chronic illnesses have caused far more deaths than infectious diseases throughout the world (except Africa) in recent years. Therefore, enrichment of micronutrients in staple food crops is of paramount importance for the nutritional security in our world. Biofortification is the development of micronutrient- and/or vitamin-rich crops using traditional crop improvement practices as well as modern biotechnology tools. It is a more sustainable and cost effective method than food supplementation, fortification and diet diversification. This work consolidates available information on the different aspects of breeding for improved nutrition of pulses. An overview of entire pulses based on their nutritional profile is given so that audience can find the desired information easily. Food legumes are the active ingredients in many gluten-free food products and there is a continuous rise of the use of pulses flour in milling and baking processes. Our book sheds light on recent efforts and the underlying constraints of meeting the public demand. We believe this work provides the basic information for anyone interested in biofortification and stimulate further research to meet this unique challenge.

Grain legumes, including common-bean, chickpea, pigeonpea, pea, cowpea, lentil and others, form important constituents of global diets, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Despite this significant role, global production has increased only marginally in the past 50 years. The slow production growth, along with a rising human population and improved buying capacity has substantially reduced the per capita availability of food legumes. Changes in environmental climate have also had significant impact on production, creating a need to identify stable donors among genetic resources for environmentally robust genes and designing crops resilient to climate change. Genetic and Genomic Resources of Grain Legume Improvement is the first book to bring together the latest resources in plant genetics and genomics to facilitate the identification of specific germplasm, trait mapping and allele mining to more effectively develop biotic and abiotic-stress-resistant grains. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, crop biologists and students working with crop development. Explores origin, distribution and diversity of grain legumes Presents information on germplasm collection, evaluation and maintenance Offers insight into pre-breeding/germplasm enhancement efforts Integrates genomic and genetic resources in crop improvement Internationally contributed work

This edited volume provides state-of–the-art overview of abiotic stress responses and tolerance mechanisms of different legume crops viz., chickpea, mung bean, lentil, black gram, cowpea, cluster bean, soybean and groundnut. Legumes play an important role in human nutrition and soil health through fixation of nitrogen. Legume production and productivity are vulnerable to different abiotic stresses. A proper understanding about the physiological and molecular basis of the legume crops is essential for genetic improvement of abiotic stress tolerance. This book consists of 15 chapters covering physiological and biochemical basis, molecular physiology, molecular breeding, genetics, genomics, transgenics, epigenetics of drought, saline, high temperature and nutrient deficiency stresses, and the role of microRNAs in abiotic stress tolerance. This volume offers new perspectives in legume crop abiotic stress management, and is useful for various stakeholders, including post graduates students, scientists, environmentalists and policymakers.

The genesis of the International Food Legume Research Conference (IFLRC) can be traced back to 1983 - and so this Volume, the Proceedings of that Conference, has had a gestation period of close to five years. Professor Norman Simmonds, the perennial Book Review Editor of Experimental Agriculture, has expressed the opinion (vol. 22, p. 201, 1986) that "Many symposial volumes are just plain awful!" Elsewhere (Nature vol. 312, pp. 201-2, 1984), Anthony Watkinson - then a Commissioning Editor at Oxford University Press has described several reasons which have led him to believe that "Conference proceedings - symposia - are generally disliked . . . . To put it mildly, this type of publication has a bad name". The problems, from an author's perspective, of contributing to any many-authored publication are aired in an exchange of correspondence in Biologist (vol. 30, pp. 123 and 180, 1983; and vol. 31, pp. 3 and 69,1984). And from the editor's viewpoint, D. J. Weatherall - then Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford - has described (Nature vol. 317, p.

Legumes have played an important part as human food and animal feed in cropping systems since the dawn of agriculture. The legume family is arguably one of the most abundantly domesticated crop plant families. Their ability to symbiotically fix nitrogen and improve soil fertility has been rewarded since antiquity and makes them a key protein source. Pea was the original model organism used in Mendel´s discovery of the laws of inheritance, making it the foundation of modern plant genetics. This book based on Special Issue provides up-to-date information on legume biology, genetic advances, and the legacy of Mendel.

The goal of the Second International Food Legume Research Conference held in Cairo, Egypt was to build on the success of the first conference held nearly 6 years earlier at Spokane, Washington, USA. It was at that first conference where the decision was made to hold the second Conference in Egypt and so near the ancestral home of these food legume crops. It has been a long held view that the cool season food legumes had their origin in the Mediterranean basin and the Near-east arc, and there is little doubt that food legumes were a staple food of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The cool season food legumes have the reputation for producing at least some yield under adverse conditions of poor fertility and limited moisture, i. e. , in circumstances where other crops are likely to fail completely. Yields of cool season food legumes are particularly poor in those regions where they are most important to local populations. The influx of more profitable crops such as wheat, maize, and soybeans have gradually relegated the food legumes to marginal areas with poor fertility and limited water which exposes them to even greater degrees of stress. In the past two decades, production of food legumes has declined in most of the developing countries while at the same time it has expanded greatly in Canada, Australia, and most notably in Turkey.

​​​This book is devoted to grain legumes and include eight chapters devoted to the breeding of specific grain legume crops and five general chapters dealing with important topics which are common to most of the species in focus. Soybean is not included in the book as it is commonly considered an oil crop more than a grain legume and is included in the Oil Crops Volume of the Handbook of Plant Breeding.​Legume species belong to the Fabaceae family and are characterized by their fruit, usually called pod. Several species of this family were domesticated by humans, such as soybean, common bean, faba bean, pea, chickpea, lentil, peanut, or cowpea. Some of these species are of great relevance as human and animal food. Food legumes are consumed either by their immature pod or their dry seeds, which have a high protein content. Globally, grain legumes are the most relevant source of plant protein, especially in many countries of Africa and Latin America, but there are some constraints in their production, such as a poor adaptation, pest and diseases and unstable yield. Current research trends in Legumes are focused on new methodologies involving genetic and omic studies, as well as new approaches to the genetic improvement of these species, including the relationships with their symbiotic rhizobia.