Abstract
Winged bean (P. tetragonolobus (L.) DC.) is a leguminous crop that could contribute towards food security in tropical areas, but whose growth and development is still poorly understood. In order to develop improved individuals for increased green pod and seed productivity, we investigated the factors involved in winged bean plant architecture, development, and their link to a number of yield-related traits. An F2 population was generated from the cross between M3 and FP15 Malaysian accessions and assessed under field conditions in Malaysia. The results showed stem length to be mainly influenced by internode length (rs = .80; p < .01), while multiple genes could be controlling the number of branches, with an average number of branches in the offspring above the highest parent value. The average length of branches appeared to influence the most the final number of pods per plant (rs = .44; p < .001), while flowering showed potentially transgressive segregation towards earliness, without preventing the potential development of high pod-yielding individuals (rs = − 208; p = .056). Taken together, the results reported here shed light on the interaction between morphological, developmental, and yield-related traits, defining potential targets for developing crop ideotypes to direct breeding programmes for this underutilised crop.
Highlights
The second of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations is to end hunger, achieve food security, improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (UN 2015)
At week 8 (56 days after emergence), the male M3 parent showed a significantly shorter stem compared to the female FP15, the latter appearing to grow faster and with longer internodes (Table 1)
Stem length (StL) and Number of nodes (NoN) in the F2 showed a significant deviation from the normal (p \ .001), while internode length (InL) had a normal frequency distribution (Fig. 2a)
Summary
The second of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations is to end hunger, achieve food security, improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (UN 2015). 36 Page 2 of 14 of edible crops that could contribute, only a handful (wheat, Triticum aestivum; maize, Zea mays; rice, Oryza sativa; soybean, Glycine max) still represent the majority of food production, with a recorded global trend towards more homogeneous agricultural systems (Godfray et al 2010; Khoury et al 2014). Such a narrow number of species could undermine food security whenever yield expectations are not matched, due to ever-changing conditions and extreme weather events (Challinor et al 2014; Ray et al 2015). In this regard, underutilised species offer the advantage of being locally adapted, often to low input systems, with desirable traits to contribute towards a more resilient and diversified agriculture (Weil and Khalil 1986; Padulosi et al 2013; Pellegrini and Tasciotti 2014; Chivenge et al 2015; Adhikari et al 2017)
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