Horsegram is an underutilized drought hardy crop and mainly neglected by the farmers in Northern region of India. However, the present study reveals the hidden comparative analysis of nutraceutical use with well-known legumes like Phaseolus vulgaris, Vigna mungo, Cicer arietinum, Vicia faba, Cajanus cajan, Vigna radiata, Pisum sativum and Lens culinaris. This pulse crop is an excellent source of carbohydrate, protein and dietary fiber. This present study shows that amount of energy in horsegram falls in the range of 376.12-377.21 Kcal/100 g which is maximum than the other legumes. The ash, protein, dietary fibres, carbohydrates, fat and starch content of horse gram falls in the range (2.24% to 5.16%), (18.15% to 28.8%), (5% to 16.3%), (50% to 63.4%), (1.10 to 1.9%) and (31.86% to 47.5%) respectively. Horsegram is found to be less fat and more dietary food fibers than the most common legumes. Hence, it is an excellent source of food for diabetic patients and useful in weight management. The unique anti-uroliathiatic activity of horsegram is well known against calcium oxalate crystals, calcium phosphate crystals and uric acid crystals. Anticholelithiatic, Anti-histaminic, Hemolytic, Larvicidal, Proteinase inhibition and Anti-HIV are among other unique medicinal properties of horsegram which are not reported in any other legumes.

Horsegram is an important drought resistant pulse crop from Fabaceae and can be easily grown in dry lands with no irrigation facilities. However, it remained neglected since long and has been considered as orphan legume which requires immediate attention for its improvement and for the development of new promising varieties in future. In the present study, 7352 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed from the transcriptome data and 150 SSR were randomly synthesized for validation and diversity analysis in a panel of 58 horsegram genotypes. The synthesized primers included all types of repeats spanning direpeats to hexarepeats. Of the validated SSR markers, 33 markers were polymorphic and produced 40 loci which were used to analyze the genetic diversity and structure of horsegram. In total, 130 alleles were produced in a range of 2-9 alleles with maximum alleles produced by primer HTSSR 155. Expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 0.03 to 1.00 and observed heterozygosity (Ho) ranged from 0.13 to 0.81. Polymorphism information content value ranged from 0.065 to 0.78. Dendrogram based on UPGMA and principal component analysis showed four groups of the 58 genotypes of horsegram. Structure analysis showed three genetic stocks for the analyzed germplasm. Thus, the developed SSRs can be useful in future population genetics analysis, molecular breeding studies and mapping works in horsegram germplasm as well as in related legume species.