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Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the third most economically important food legume in the world. Its yield potential is often limited by various biotic stresses, including fungal and viral diseases, insects, nematodes and parasitic weeds. Incorporating genetic resistance into cultivars is the most effective and economical way of controlling biotic stresses and this is a major objective in many breeding programs. Extensive searches for resistances have been conducted by screening commercial varieties, landraces and closely related species. Resistances to disease such as Ascochyta blight and Fusarium wilt have been identified and molecular tools are being used to increase the efficiency of gene transfer from wild species into chickpea elite genotypes. Quantitative trait loci for resistance genes have been located on linkage maps and molecular markers associated with these loci can potentially be used for efficient pyramiding of the traits. Significant chickpea genomic resources have been developed in order to investigate resistance genes. Such resources include an integrated genetic map, expressed sequence tag libraries, bacterial artificial chromosome libraries, microarrays and draft genome sequences. Although these resources have yet to be used to improve chickpea cultivars in the field, this is likely to change in the near future. These genomic resources, as well as high-resolution phenotyping tools and cutting-edge technologies such as next-generation sequencing, promise to increase efficiency as work to identify valuable candidate genes continues.

This study was aimed at identification of parental germplasm that could be used for improvement of tolerance to sodium chloride (NaCl) in field pea. An initial screening experiment of 780 globally-distributed Pisum L. accessions identified significant variation in response to applied NaCl, based on plant symptoms. Lines with relatively higher tolerance as compared to commercial varieties grown in Australia were most frequently identified within landraces originating from the central, eastern and southern provinces of China. The most tolerant identified accession was an unadapted landrace ‘ATC1836’ originating from Greece. Variation for salinity tolerance was validated using a sub-set of 70 accession lines. Salinity-induced toxicity symptoms were closely associated with reductions of plant growth rate, height, shoot and root dry matter and with increased concentration of Na+ at the plant growing tip. The level of salinity tolerance based on these factors varied substantially and provides an important basis for genetic improvement of field pea for Australia.

Genetic diversity and relationships of 802 faba bean (Vicia faba L.) landraces and varieties from different geographical locations of China and abroad were examined using ISSR markers. A total of 212 repeatable amplified bands were generated with 11 ISSR primers, of which 209 were polymorphic. Accessions from North China showed highest genetic diversity, while accessions from central China showed low level of diversity. Chinese spring faba bean germplasm was clearly separated from Chinese winter faba bean, based on principal component analysis and UPGMA clustering analysis. Winter accessions from Zhejiang (East China), Jiangxi (East China), Sichuan (Southwest China) and Guizhou (Southwest China) were quite distinct to that from other provinces in China. Great differentiation between Chinese accessions and those from rest of the world was shown with a UPGMA dendrogram. AMOVA analyses demonstrated large variation and differentiation within and among groups of accessions from China. As a continental geographic group, accessions from Europe were genetically closer to those from North Africa. Based on ISSR data, grouping results of accessions from Asia, Europe and Africa were obviously associated with their geographical origin. The overall results indicated that the genetic relationship of faba bean germplasm was closely associated with their geographical origin and their ecological habit.

Background Grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L., 2n = 14), a member of the family Leguminosae, holds great agronomic potential as grain and forage legume crop in the arid areas for its superb resilience to abiotic stresses such as drought, flood and salinity. The crop could not make much progress through conventional breeding in the past, and there are hardly any detailed molecular biology studies due to paucity of reliable molecular markers representative of the entire genome. Results Using the 454 FLX Titanium pyrosequencing technique, 651,827 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci were identified and 50,144 nonredundant primer pairs were successfully designed, of which 288 were randomly selected for validation among 23 L. sativus and one L. cicera accessions of diverse provenance. 74 were polymorphic, 70 monomorphic, and 144 with no PCR product. The number of observed alleles ranged from two to five, the observed heterozygosity from 0 to 0.9545, and Shannon’s information index ranged from 0.1013 to 1.0980, respectively. The dendrogram constructed by using unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) based on Nei's genetic distance, showed obvious distinctions and understandable relationships among the 24 accessions. Conclusions The large number of SSR primer pairs developed in this study would make a significant contribution to genomics enabled improvement of grasspea.