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Agronomy
Special Issues
Breeding Advances in Legume Diversification and Biofortification
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Breeding Advances in Legume Diversification and Biofortification

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Breeding and Genetics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (14 December 2022) | Viewed by 4131

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Photini V. Mylona

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
HAO-DEMETER, Institute of Plant Breeding & Genetic Resources, 570 01 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: legumes; biofortification; genomics; transcriptomics; metabolomics; breeding; molecular markers; seed- plant-phenotyping; genotyping; mineral composition; landracesa
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Legumes are indispensable to nutrition, agriculture, industry, and economy and to environment sustainability. Legumes as pulses constitute a staple food to a large part of the world population, providing protein, vitamins, and minerals. Thus, legumes represent suitable candidates for biofortification to combat the “hidden hunger” of vitamins and minerals that challenge more than 2 billion people and to improve their nutritional quality and bioavailability.

On the other hand, legumes are integral constituents of rotation systems in agriculture improving soil fertility and structure, as well as productivity of sequential crops. Hence, legumes sustain and improve soil diversity, as well as ecosystem services. Given that climate change threatens food security, efforts are centred to confine the chemical and energy inputs in agriculture towards a green growth and development. Consequently, legumes constitute exceptional crops to foster plant-protein food production, ecosystem services and resilient biodiversity to support human health and sustainable natural resources. Legumes diversification and biofortification are central to meet this potential. The recent progress in legume genome sequencing for more than 45 species, including major pulse crops, such as soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.), chickpea (Cicer arietinum), lentil (Lens culinaris), lupin (Lupinus angustifolius L. and Lupinus albus L.), mung bean (V. radiata var. radiata), pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), and peanut (Arachis hypogaea) have paved the way for rapid advancements.

Contemporary and innovative technologies counting genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, phenomics, and others, are implemented in agriculture and in plant research to gain insight of molecular mechanisms and metabolic pathways to safeguard and improve legumes and pulses nutritional value. Nowadays, legumes diversity is central to agriculture, molecular -omics and breeding technologies towards legumes farming diversification and biofortification to instigate legumes food expansion in support of human health and rural communities’ sustainable development.

The SI will collect research articles, reviews and opinion articles linked to all the aforementioned issues.

Dr. Photini V. Mylona
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • legumes
  • pulses
  • biofortification
  • genomics
  • metabolomics
  • molecular markers
  • agronomic practices
  • breeding technologies
  • food security

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1997 KiB  
Article
Improved Forage Quality in Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) via Selection for Increased Stem Fiber Digestibility
by Zhanyou Xu, Deborah J. Heuschele, JoAnn F. S. Lamb, Hans-Joachim G. Jung and Deborah A. Samac
Agronomy 2023, 13(3), 770; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13030770 - 7 Mar 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1583
Abstract
The low digestibility of fiber in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) limits dry matter intake and energy availability in ruminant animal production systems. Previously, alfalfa plants were identified for low or high rapid (16 h) and low or high potential (96 h) in [...] Read more.
The low digestibility of fiber in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) limits dry matter intake and energy availability in ruminant animal production systems. Previously, alfalfa plants were identified for low or high rapid (16 h) and low or high potential (96 h) in vitro neutral detergent fiber digestibility (IVNDFD) of plant stems. Here, two cycles of bidirectional selection for 16 h and 96 h IVNDFD were carried out. The resulting populations were evaluated for total herbage, percentage of stems to total biomass, IVNDFD, neutral detergent fiber (NDF), and acid detergent lignin as a proportion of NDF (ADL/NDF) at three maturity stages. Within these populations, 96 h IVNDFD was highly heritable (h2 = 0.71), while 16 h IVNDFD had lower heritability (h2 = 0.46). Selection for high IVNDFD reduced NDF and ADL/NDF in plant stems at the late flowering and green pod maturity stages and reduced seasonal variability in stem digestibility but did not alter the percentage of stems. Stability analyses across 12 harvest environments found that selection for high IVNDFD had little effect on environmental stability of the trait compared to the unselected population. Thus, selection for stem IVNDFD was a highly effective strategy for developing alfalfa populations with improved nutritional quality without changing the percentage of stems to total biomass. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Breeding Advances in Legume Diversification and Biofortification)
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17 pages, 2360 KiB  
Article
Seed Phenotyping and Genetic Diversity Assessment of Cowpea (V. unguiculata) Germplasm Collection
by Ioannis Zafeiriou, Michalia Sakellariou and Photini V. Mylona
Agronomy 2023, 13(1), 274; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13010274 - 16 Jan 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2184
Abstract
Cowpea is a nutrient-rich staple legume and climate-resilient crop for vulnerable agroecosystems. However, the crop still remains underutilized, mainly due to its narrow genetic base, and the production is often ravaged by aphid infestation outbreaks. Thus, genetic diversity assessment and the detection of [...] Read more.
Cowpea is a nutrient-rich staple legume and climate-resilient crop for vulnerable agroecosystems. However, the crop still remains underutilized, mainly due to its narrow genetic base, and the production is often ravaged by aphid infestation outbreaks. Thus, genetic diversity assessment and the detection of defense-related alleles are fundamental to germplasm management and utilization in breeding strategies to support food safety in climate change times. A germplasm collection of 87 cowpea landraces sourced from Greece was subjected to seed phenotyping, SSR genotyping and to screening for the presence of aphid-resistance-conferring alleles. Significant diversity in the species’ local germplasm was revealed. The landraces were grouped in metapopulations based on their broader geographical origin. High amounts of variation and statistically significant differences were detected among the landraces regarding the seed morphological traits, the seed color and eye color according to MANOVA (Wilk’s λ = 0.2, p < 0.01) and significant correlations were revealed among these features according to Pearson’s test (p < 0.05). High levels of genetic polymorphism were detected for the metapopulations, ranging from 59% (VuPop3) to 82% (VuPop4). The AMOVA revealed that 93% of the molecular diversity was distributed among the landraces of each metapopulation. Further population structure analysis presumed the existence of two inferred populations, where in population A, 79% of the landraces have a cream/cream-brown seed coat, whereas in population B, 94% of the landraces are brown-ochre to black-seeded. Molecular screening for alleles conferring aphid resistance revealed the correspondence of 12 landraces to the resistant genotype of TVu-2876. The study highlights the importance of cowpea germplasm collection genetic diversity, as a source of important agronomic traits, to support breeding efforts and expand cowpea cultivation to foster food security and agriculture sustainability and diversification in climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Breeding Advances in Legume Diversification and Biofortification)
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