Legume Crop Wild Relatives

Grain Legume crops are an important component of global food and nutritional security and help in maintaining agro-ecological systems. They fix atmospheric nitrogen via the root inhabiting rhizobacteria thereby, minimises the harmful effects caused due to excessive application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers in the soil environment. There has been less focus on legume crop wild relatives for harnessing their potential traits and novel gene(s) to incorporate them into the cultivated legumes for developing climate resilience grain legumes. In the proposed edited book, we will highlight the importance of various potential traits of crop wild relatives which are yet to be properly harnessed for designing future climate-resilient grain legumes. We also update how advances in molecular genetics and genomics have enabled underpinning the several candidate gene(s)/genomic regions in various crop wild relatives harbouring adaptive traits that confer climate resilience in grain legumes.

The readers will be benefiting a new information on various crop wild relatives in grain legumes. How these crop wild relatives could be explored for searching novel climate resilience genes for developing future climate resilient legume crops. They will gain an understanding of how genomic advances (genome sequence, pan genomes) have uncovered the novel genomic regions attributing climate resilience in various grain legumes. Finally, how these wild relatives can play a critical role in maintaining the lost gene(s) due to the domestication process will be discussed.

Comprehensive information on conventional breeding, advanced breeding, and recent advances in genomics covering all the major crop wild relatives of legumes are not available in a single book. Thus, the proposed book will provide readers with the latest updates on various information covering all aspects of wild species of legumes.