Increasing the amount of bioavailable mineral elements in plant foods would help to improve the nutritional status of populations in developing countries. Legume seeds have the potential to provide many essential nutrients. It is important to have information on genetic variations among different lentil populations so that plant breeding programs can use new varieties in cross-breeding programs. The main objective of this study was to characterize the micro- and macronutrient concentrations of lentil landraces seeds collected from South-Eastern Turkey. We found impressive variation in the micro- and macroelement concentrations in 39 lentil landraces and 7 cultivars. We investigated the relationships of traits by correlation analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). The concentrations of several minerals, particularly Zn, were positively correlated with other minerals, suggesting that similar pathways or transporters control the uptake and transport of these minerals. Some genotypes had high mineral and protein content and potential to improve the nutritional value of cultivated lentil. Cross-breeding of numerous lentil landraces from Turkey with currently cultivated varieties could improve the levels of micro- and macronutrients of lentil and may contribute to the worldwide lentil quality breeding program.

The molecular characterization of cultivated plant genepools is of foremost importance for germplasm utilization in plant breeding. However, no comprehensive genetic fingerprinting of Turkish lentil landraces existed so far. To overcome this gap, 38 lentil landraces from southeast Turkey, together with six commercial varieties, were molecularly characterized using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) molecular markers. The ISSR analysis, performed with 14 primers, yielded 105 polymorphic bands and the AFLP analysis, carried out with six primer combinations, amplified 119 polymorphic fragments. Even though the AFLP produced more bands per primer combinations, the ISSR detected more polymorphisms. Unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means dendrograms based on Jaccard similarities obtained from three data sets: (i) ISSR, (ii) AFLP and (iii) combined ISSR and AFLP data, were similar and separated the landraces into two main groups. Turkish lentil landraces exhibited considerable genetic diversity. One landrace from Karacadag/Diyarbakir region was significantly different from the rest of the germplasm analysed. Jaccard distances highlighted sharp differences among landraces over short geographic distances. The knowledge of regional differentiation has practical utility in the management of germplasm and in breeding programmes.

The first step towards the biofortification of edible portions of crop species with improved nutritional value is to understand the genetic diversity available to breeders in germplasm collections. A faba bean germplasm (129 landraces and 4 cultivars) from diverse geographic regions of Turkey was assessed for micro-and macroelement contents of seeds. The results showed high diversity in open-pollinated faba bean germplasm for contents of N ( 27.5-93.3 g kg -1 ), P (1.24-4.89 g kg -1 ), K (4.5-19.3 g kg -1 ), Fe (29.7-96.3 mg kg -1 ), Mn (15.5-29.2 mg kg -1 ), Cu (10.3-33.0 mg kg -1 ), and Zn (10.4-49.3 mg kg -1 ). Meanwhile, the ranges of mineral elements in the landraces were significantly higher than those in the commercial cultivars. Concentrations of these mineral elements were significantly and positively correlated with each other. Principal component analysis clearly split the faba bean landraces into 2 groups and the first 2 principal components accounted around 70.91% of the total variations. These findings indicate a wide range of variations for the investigated minerals in the Turkish gene pool that can provide a good source of diversity to use in faba bean biofortification for increased levels of available mineral elements and better yield.

We examined the physical, physicochemical, and cooking properties of 91 kabuli chickpea landraces from Turkey, using two cultivars ( _ Inci and _ Izmir-92) as controls. All landraces were grown under the same agroclimatic conditions to eliminate variance caused by genotype 9 environment interactions. There was high diversity among the landraces in the contents of protein (17.55-23.31%), fat (4.45-6.11%), ash (2.54-3.41%), fiber (2.03-4.18%), starch (41.76-49.07%), moisture (6.39-10.57%), 100-seed weight (25.03-51.67 g), hydration capacity (0.2585-0.6169 g/ml), swelling index (0.7207-1.1859), swelling capacity (0.15-0.32 ml seed -1 ), cooking time (33-72 min), and seed density (0.8450-1.4800 g/ml). Regional analysis of landraces showed significant differences with respect to nutritional characteristics and cooking parameters. There were also significant relationships between various seed quality and cooking parameters. Together, our results provide an initial step toward identification of chickpea landraces that may be useful for development of highquality chickpea cultivars.

Since 1925, more than 100 wheat varieties were developed and released in Turkey, and many more were introduced from abroad, but no systematic analysis of their genetic diversity has been performed yet. In this research, a total of 34 domestic and foreign cultivars (12 durum and 22 bread wheats), released in Turkey between 1936 and 2000, were fingerprinted by means of five amplified fragment length polymorphism and three selective amplification of microsatellite polymorphic loci (SAMPL) primer combinations, to evaluate their genetic variation and to determine the existence of cultivar-specific bands. Among the 344 amplicons scored, 214 were polymorphic. The primer combination E ACG /M AGG yielded the highest number and the primer combination SAMPL-6/M AGA produced the lowest number of polymorphic bands. Most cultivars were molecularly very similar, although a few distinct ones (the durum wheat ÔKunduru-1149Õ and the bread wheat Ô _ Ikizce-96Õ) were also identified. Seven cultivar-specific markers for different bread wheat cultivars (ÔGoliaÕ, ÔSeri-82Õ, ÔAdana-99Õ, ÔPandasÕ and ÔSertak-52Õ) and six cultivar-specific markers for durum wheat cv ÔKunduruÕ were observed. Our results show that genetic diversity among old and present-day wheat cultivar commonly grown in Turkey is limited.