Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) marker was used to assess diversity in germplasm collection of Mucuna species which has gained tremendous attention in the recent past due to its promising nutritional, agronomic and medicinal attributes. Twenty five accessions comprising five species, collected from seven states of India were evaluated with twelve AFLP primer combinations that generated a total of 1,612 fragments with an average of 134 fragments per primer combination. The values of polymorphic information content (PIC), marker index (MI) and the resolving power (Rp) demonstrated the utility of the primer combinations used in the present study for discriminating the Mucuna accessions. UPGMA and Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of the genotypic data revealed clustering of accessions as per phenetic and genetic relationships. The Jaccard's similarity coefficient values suggested good variability among the M. pruriens accessions indicating their utility in breeding programs. Molecular diversity presented in this study combined with the datasets on other morphological/agronomic traits will be highly useful for selecting appropriate accessions for plant improvement through conventional as well as molecular breeding approaches and for evolving suitable conservation strategies.

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Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC is a tropical legume cover crop with promising nutritional and agronomic potentials. It is also a key source of 3,4 dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine (L-Dopa) – a precursor of dopamine used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. However, lack of well-characterized germplasm plus poor accessibility to genomic resources has hindered its breeding programs. Furthermore, the cause and effect of various biotic and abiotic stresses impacting yield is also little studied. Systematic collection and evaluation of Indian germplasm by our group revealed presence of a diverse gene pool in India that can support a variety of breeding needs. The stability of L-Dopa trait across environments examined through Genotype and environment (G × E) interaction studies, as well as feasibility check on barcoding and phylogenetic analyses based on karyotype and conserved nuclear and chloroplast genes showed promising outcome. Germplasm screening for select biotic abiotic stresses identified resilient genotypes. Advances in use of DNA markers for diversity analysis, linkage map development, tagging of genes/quantitative trait loci for qualitative and quantitative traits, and progress in genomics are presented.

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Mucuna pruriens is a well-recognized agricultural and horticultural crop with important medicinal use. However, antinutritional factors in seed and adverse morphological characters have negatively affected its cultivation. To elucidate the genetic control of agronomic traits, an intraspecific genetic linkage map of Indian M. pruriens has been developed based on amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers using 200 F₂ progenies derived from a cross between wild and cultivated genotypes. The resulting linkage map comprised 129 AFLP markers dispersed over 13 linkage groups spanning a total distance of 618.88 cM with an average marker interval of 4.79 cM. For the first time, three QTLs explaining about 6.05-14.77% of the corresponding total phenotypic variation for three quantitative (seed) traits and, eight QTLs explaining about 25.96% of the corresponding total phenotypic variation for three qualitative traits have been detected on four linkage groups. The map presented here will pave a way for mapping of genes/QTLs for the important agronomic and horticultural traits contrasting between the parents used in this study.

The Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC. can meet three burgeoning needs of tropical agriculture: low-cost protein source, high-value medicinal plant, and an excellent green manure cover crop. But like other underutilized crops, it lacks modern breeding resources. Identifying marker-trait associations (MTAs) can prompt marker-assisted breeding paving a way for development of the improved varieties. Recent studies have demonstrated feasibility of identifying MTAs using a small number of accessions (<100) triggering the hope for resource poor crops. Taking cues from there, we characterized a panel of 70 M. pruriens accessions across two consecutive years and performed association analysis for 16 phenotypic traits using 66 genic-microsatellite markers. The results showed significant phenotypic (P < 0.05) and genetic diversity (Shannon’s information index, I = 0.62) in our germplasm collection. Many of the tested traits were highly heritable (42.86% to 99.93%). A total of 15 MTAs were detected at an adjusted significance level of P < 5.55 × 10-3 for nine economic traits such as – seed length, seed thickness, seed width, hundred seed weight, seed yield per plant, inflorescence length, flower buds per inflorescence, flower length, and petiole length with phenotypic variance explained (PVE) ranging from 14.72 to 31.12%. Their annotation using the Arabidopsis genome database affirmed reliability of our MTAs. This is the first report on association mapping in M. pruriens and results are expected to galvanize marker-assisted breeding as well as mining of candidate genes in this promising legume.