Global strategy for the conservation and use of Vigna

Authors: NAIR, RAMAKRISHNAN - World Vegetable Center; PUJAR, MAHESH - World Vegetable Center; COCKEL, CHRISTOPHER - Royal Botanical Gardens; SCHELDEMAN, XAVIER - Meise Botanic Garden; VANDERLOOK, FILIP - Meise Botanic Garden; ZONNEVELD, MAARTEN VAN - World Vegetable Center; TAKAHASHI, YU - National Agriculture And Food Research Organization (NARO), Agricultrual Research Center; Tallury, Shyamalrau - Shyam; OLANIYI, OYATOMI - International Institute Of Tropical Agriculture (IITA); GIOVANNINI, PETER - Global Crop Diversity Trust

Submitted to: Workshop Proceedings
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/4/2023
Publication Date: 4/4/2023
Citation: Nair, R.M., Pujar, M., Cockel, C., Scheldeman, X., Vanderlook, F., Zonneveld, M., Takahashi, Y., Tallury, S.P., Olaniyi, O., Giovannini, P. 2023. Global strategy for the conservation and use of Vigna. Global Crop Diversity Trust. Global Crop Diversity Trust. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7565174.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7565174

Interpretive Summary: A survey on Vigna was sent to 30 collection holders identified from the databases. The collection holders were asked to complete an online survey on the status and challenges of their collections. We received responses from 21 genebanks, which were all included in our analyses. Most of the genebanks that responded are governmental bodies (76%), while the others are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (19%) and non-departmental government bodies (5%). On the basis of the results of the survey, we recognize that there are numerous challenges associated with the sustainability of the conservation and use of Vigna crop diversity. The initiative to prepare the global strategy for the conservation ad use of Vigna (GSCV) was led by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), in association with a number of other participating institutes/gene-banks. The Global Crop Diversity Trust (The Crop Trust) facilitated the development of this document, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). The outcome of this work in the form of GSCV will be available in open-access form to researchers and people working on conservation and use of plant genetic resources worldwide.

Technical Abstract: Globally, domesticated Vigna species (crops) are cultivated across more than 25 million hectares of land annually, among which cowpea has the largest cultivation area, 14.5 million hectares, with a total annual grain production of 6.2 million metric tons (Kebede et al. 2020). Mungbean has the second largest cultivation area with over 7.3 million hectares (Nair et al. 2020), whereas urdbean is cultivated over 5 million hectares. Other domesticated species, such as adzuki bean, creole bean, rice bean, moth bean and yardlong bean, are mostly cultivated in Asia. Bambara groundnut and tuber cowpea are predominantly cultivated in Africa. Some of the cultivated Vigna species can be cultivated under harsh environmental conditions, such as high temperature and low rainfall, and in low-fertility soils. Cowpea and mungbean offer several fresh products including, tender shoot tips, leaves of plants at seedling stage, immature pods, and microgreens. The characterization of Vigna species in terms of different morphological traits revealed significant variation in particular characteristics among groups of species. Determining the genetic diversity within germplasm at the molecular level would greatly benefit crop improvement programs, since it would reveal the extent and nature of genetic variation within and among species. This information could then be considered to select diverse parents of the same species or to identify the most closely related parents for interspe- cific crossing, to increase heterosis, and to introgress only the desirable genes from more diverse backgrounds into elite germplasm.