Abstract
Some phenotypic traits from wild legumes are relatively less examined and exploited towards their domestication and improvement. Cooking time for instance, is one of the most central factors that direct a consumer’s choice for a food legume. However, such characters, together with seed water absorption capacity are less examined by scientists, especially in wild legumes. Therefore, this study explores the cooking time and the water absorption capacity upon soaking on 84 accessions of wild Vigna legumes and establishes a relationship between their cooking time and water absorbed during soaking for the very first time. The accessions were grown in two agro-ecological zones and used in this study. The Mattson cooker apparatus was used to determine the cooking time of each accession and 24 h soaking was performed to evaluate water absorbed by each accession. The two-way analysis of variance revealed that there is no interaction between the water absorption capacity and cooking time of the wild Vigna accessions with their locations or growing environments. The study revealed that there is no environment × genotype interaction with respect to cooking time and water absorption capacity as phenotypic traits while genotype interactions were noted for both traits within location studied. Furthermore, 11 wild genotypes of Vigna accessions showed no interaction between the cooking time and the water absorption capacity when tested. However, a strong negative correlation was observed in some of the wild Vigna species which present phenotypic similarities and clusters with domesticated varieties. The study could also help to speculate on some candidates for domestication among the wild Vigna species. Such key preliminary information could be of vital consideration in breeding, improvement, and domestication of wild Vigna legumes to make them useful for human benefit as far as cooking time is concerned.
Highlights
Legumes, the third largest family among flowering plants, grouping about650 genera and 20,000 species, represent the second most valuable plant source of nutrients for both humans and animals [1]
The values for both water absorption and cooking time showed no significant difference between agroecological zones and between the three species and no environment × species interaction (Table 2a)
This study demonstrates that the replication of the same species within the same location does not depend on the other species for the water absorption capacity trait (Table 2b), while for cooking time trait, there is an interaction with other species within the same location (Table 2c)
Summary
Legumes (family: Fabaceae), the third largest family among flowering plants, grouping about650 genera and 20,000 species, represent the second most valuable plant source of nutrients for both humans and animals [1]. Agronomy 2019, 9, 509 such as soybeans, cowpeas, and common beans [2] Their production rate remains unsatisfying compared with their consumption rate due to several challenges ranging from agronomic constraints to policy issues through farmers’ and consumers’ acceptability [3,4]. These challenges have directed the interest of some scientists towards investigating novel alternatives by screening the hitherto wild non-domesticated species within the little-known genera of legumes in order to find important traits that fit consumers’ acceptance and desire without necessarily genetically engineering them [4]. Consumers’ responses to food depend on several factors limited to sensory characteristics of the product and their physiological status
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