Significance of genetic resources of cool season annual legumes, I: Crop wild relatives

Abstract

This review is attempting to present the wild relatives of cool season annual legumes and thus hopefully answer to how and what these taxa, colloquially said, have to offer to the cultivated crops, in terms of yield, quality, stress resistance and other economically important issues. They represent a wide gene pool of various desirable traits, especially those related to abiotic and biotic stress resistance that may be introgressed into the advanced cultivars, with overcoming potential physiological or genetic barriers. The wide mutual variations of the most important characteristics may be extremely beneficial for the advanced cultivars due to numerous bottlenecks and their narrow genetic base. If considered from a wider point of view, wild relatives of cool season annual legumes represent not only a national or regional treasury, but also a tool to improve the modern agriculture to the benefit of the whole mankind.