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Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) is a protein-rich cool-season food legume with an excellent source of protein, prebiotic carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. With climate change, heat, and drought stresses have become more frequent and intense in lentil growing areas with a strong influence on phenology, grain yield, and nutritional quality. This study aimed to assess the impact of heat and drought stresses on phenology, grain yield, and nutritional quality of lentil. For this purpose, 100 lentil genotypes from the global collection were evaluated under normal, heat, and combined heat-drought conditions. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences (p < 0.001) among lentil genotypes for phenological traits, yield components, and grain quality traits. Under no stress conditions, mineral concentrations among lentil genotypes varied from 48 to 109 mg kg−1 for iron (Fe) and from 31 to 65 mg kg−1 for zinc (Zn), while crude protein content ranged from 22.5 to 32.0%. Iron, zinc, and crude protein content were significantly reduced under stress conditions, and the effect of combined heat-drought stress was more severe than heat stress alone. A significant positive correlation was observed between iron and zinc concentrations under both no stress and stress conditions. Based on grain yield, crude protein, and iron and zinc concentrations, lentil genotypes were grouped into three clusters following the hierarchical cluster analysis. Promising lentil genotypes with high micronutrient contents, crude protein, and grain yield with the least effect of heat and drought stress were identified as the potential donors for biofortification in the lentil breeding program.

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Seed traits of bread wheat, including the seed size that is considered to be associated with early vigor of the crop and end-use quality, are valuable to farmers and breeders. In this study, a collection of 789 bread wheat landraces, held in-trust at the genebank of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) were scanned for seed morphometric traits using GrainScan. Diversity analysis using the 12k DartSeq SNP markers revealed that these accessions can be grouped into five distinct clusters. To evaluate the performance for early selection from genebank accessions, we examined the accuracy of genomic selection models with genomic relationship that these landraces accounted for. Based on cross-validations, prediction accuracies for seed traits ranged from 0.64 for seed perimeter to 0.74 for seed width. The variability of prediction accuracies across random validations averaged at 0.14, with a range from 0.12 to 0.18, suggesting stable predictability and reproducible results even with a collection of much greater genetic diversity from genebank accessions. Adding the climatic relationship matrix between accessions based on passport information improved the predictive ability by 8%. Our results on seed traits demonstrated the capacity for estimating important agronomic phenotypes for genebank accessions directly based on genomic information, further advocating the advance in genomic technologies for identifying parental germplasm as potential donors of beneficial alleles for introgression.

High temperature during the reproductive stage limits the growth and development of lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus). The reproductive and seed filling periods are the most sensitive to heat stress, resulting in limited yield and nutritional quality. Climate change causes frequent incidents of heat stress for global food crop production. This study aimed to assess the impact of high temperature during the reproductive stage of lentil on grain yield, nutritional value, and cooking quality. Thirty-six lentil genotypes were evaluated under controlled conditions for their high temperature response. Genotypic variation was significant (p < 0.001) for all the traits under study. High temperature-induced conditions reduced protein, iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) concentrations in lentils. Under heat stress conditions, mineral concentrations among lentil genotypes varied from 6.0 to 8.8 mg/100 g for Fe and from 4.9 to 6.6 mg/100 g for Zn. Protein ranged from 21.9 to 24.3 g/100 g. Cooking time was significantly reduced due to high temperature treatment; the range was 3–11 min, while under no stress conditions, cooking time variation was from 5 to 14 min. Phytic acid variation was 0.5–1.2 g/100 g under no stress conditions, while under heat stress conditions, phytic acid ranged from 0.4 to 1.4 g/100 g. All genotypes had highly significant bioavailable Fe and moderately bioavailable Zn under no stress conditions. Whereas under heat stress conditions, Fe and Zn bioavailability was reduced due to increased phytic acid levels. Our results will greatly benefit the development of biofortified lentil cultivars for global breeding programs to generate promising genotypes with low phytic acid and phytic acid/micronutrient ratio to combat micronutrient malnutrition.