Wild Vigna Legumes: Farmers’ Perceptions, Preferences, and Prospective Uses for Human Exploitation

Abstract

The insufficient food supply due to low agricultural productivity and quality standards is one of the major modern challenges of global agricultural food production. Advances in conventional breeding and crop domestication have begun to mitigate this issue by increasing varieties and generation of stress-resistant traits. Yet, very few species of legumes have been domesticated and perceived as usable food/feed material, while various wild species remain unknown and underexploited despite the critical global food demand. Besides the existence of a few domesticated species, there is a bottleneck challenge of product acceptability by both farmers and consumers. Therefore, this paper explores farmers’ perceptions, preferences, and the possible utilization of some wild Vigna species of legumes toward their domestication and exploitation. Quantitative and qualitative surveys were conducted in a mid-altitude agro-ecological zone (Arusha region) and a high altitude agro-ecological zone (Kilimanjaro region) in Tanzania to obtain the opinions of 150 farmers regarding wild legumes and their uses. The study showed that very few farmers in the Arusha (28%) and Kilimanjaro (26%) regions were aware of wild legumes and their uses. The study further revealed through binary logistic regression analysis that the prior knowledge of wild legumes depended mainly on farmers’ location and not on their gender, age groups, education level, or farming experience. From the experimental plot with 160 accessions of wild Vigna legumes planted and grown up to near complete maturity, 74 accessions of wild Vigna legumes attracted the interest of farmers who proposed various uses for each wild accession. A Χ2 test (likelihood ratio test) revealed that the selection of preferred accessions depended on the farmers’ gender, location, and farming experience. Based on their morphological characteristics (leaves, pods, seeds, and general appearance), farmers perceived wild Vigna legumes as potentially useful resources that need the attention of researchers. Specifically, wild Vigna legumes were perceived as human food, animal feed, medicinal plants, soil enrichment material, and soil erosion-preventing materials. Therefore, it is necessary for the scientific community to consider these lines of farmers’ suggestions before carrying out further research on agronomic and nutritional characteristics toward the domestication of these alien species for human exploitation and decision settings.

Agro-Morphological Exploration of Some Unexplored Wild Vigna Legumes for Domestication

“…Cluster 1 could also offer recommendations pertaining to the cooking time and water absorption capacity traits as reported earlier [26]. These are clear indications that these wild legumes could be domesticated and made useful, as the preliminary finding showed that farmers would be interested in utilizing them for various purposes [27]. In fact, it has recently been reported that Vigna stipulacea, another wild legume species with biotic resistance traits is domesticable [28] However, it is also necessary to note that domestication process could also affect the nutritional and health characteristics of the domesticated product as alerted by some researchers [29].…”

“…In fact, it has recently been reported that Vigna stipulacea, another wild legume species with biotic resistance traits is domesticable [28] However, it is also necessary to note that domestication process could also affect the nutritional and health characteristics of the domesticated product as alerted by some researchers [29]. Therefore, the choice of V. vexillata, V. reticulata, V. ambacensis, and V. racemosa species in this study was first based on their availability in genebanks and from the little preliminary information obtained from the authors earlier investigations [5,26,27]. Figure 7 provides further indications relating to the domestication of these wild legumes by grouping them based on their quantitative agro-morphological traits.…”

Assessment of Water Absorption Capacity and Cooking Time of Wild Under-Exploited Vigna Species towards their Domestication

“…Yield is a very important trait in crop domestication. However, these wild legumes with multipurpose utilizations as suggested by farmers in our earlier investigation [4] fit well as candidates for domestication considering the domestication criteria established by researchers recently [35]. Crop domestication of novel species is becoming one of the potential alternatives to mitigate the global food security challenge.…”

“…In the same vein, it is also noted that the domesticated legumes possess high values of yield per plant in addition to their low cooking time and high water absorption capacity values as compared with the wild ones. Such characteristics might be among the factors that hinders their utilization as earlier reported [4]. Yield is a very important trait in crop domestication.…”

“…The very first comprehensive web genomic resource of the genus Vigna has just recently been published and that covered only three commercially domesticated species [28]. Taxonomic rearrangements are also still under investigation [29] and efforts to domesticate some of the selected wild Vigna species is in progress [2,4]. Pearson correlation analysis shows that there is no correlation between the water absorption and cooking time considering only the three domesticated species (r = −0.025).…”