Potential, constraints and applications of in vitro methods in improving grain legumes

Abstract

Grain legumes, the important constituents of sustainability-based cropping systems and energy-limited vegetarian diets have long been the subject of scientific research. Tremendous technological strides were made in the so-called orphan crops, in terms of both varietal improvement and generation of basic information. Despite recalcitrancy and high genotype dependency, in vitro culture techniques such as organogenesis, in vitro mutagenesis, embryo rescue and in vitro gene transfer have been deployed for improvement of several grain legumes and these played an important role in introgression of desirable genes from related and distant species and creation of additional genetic variability. Stable and reproducible regeneration protocols resulted in the development of genetically modified chickpea, pigeon pea, cowpea, mungbean, etc., while embryo rescue was deployed successfully for recovery of interspecific recombinants, a few of them exploited for the development of commercial cultivars. Nevertheless, doubled haploidy witnessed limited success and protoplast regeneration and in vitro mutagenesis remained of academic interest.The present review focuses on the progress, achievements, constraints and perspectives of using in vitro technology in grain legume improvement.

Improvement of Direct Regeneration of Mexican Soybean From Cotyledonary Nodes

“…Thus, the regeneration capability, in terms of the number of shoots, is the result of interactions between the genotype and the explant pretreatments. This finding agrees with Pratap et al (2018), who pointed out that regeneration of grain legumes is highly genotype dependent. The process of organogenesis involves the activation of several metabolic pathways and developmental genes; therefore, protocols must be customized for each genotype (Nagle et al, 2018).…”

Pod shattering in grain legumes: emerging genetic and environment-related patterns

“…The exact roles of several major candidate shattering genes are still unresolved, in part due to experimental limitations in the Fabaceae. While in vitro culture is possible for some groups, especially those in the cool-season clade, legumes tend to be recalcitrant to tissue culture and regeneration, which limits the range of experimental approaches that can be used to evaluate them (Pratap et al, 2018). Genetic studies are therefore typically based on combinations of fine-mapping, sequencing of large populations, expression data, anatomical, and biochemical analyses, and in some cases transformation of species such as Arabidopsis with candidate legume genes (e.g.…”

Yellow Mosaic Disease (YMD) of Mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek): Current Status and Management Opportunities

“…sublobata and V. trilobata have been attempted with some success (Table 3). Unfortunately, wide hybridization in mungbean recorded severe cross-barriers like development of a few, small and mostly non-viable hybrid seeds, embryo death or hybrid sterility, incompatibility in chromosomal pairing and chromosome elimination (Pandiyan et al, 2012;Sudha et al, 2013a;Pratap et al, 2018). DNA marker analysis has also shown severe segregation distortion and chromosome elimination in an F 2 population derived from a cross between mungbean and rice bean (Sudha et al, 2013a).…”