Abstract
Hairy vetch (Vicia villosa ssp. villosa Roth) is native of Europe and Western Asia and it is the second most cultivated vetch worldwide. Hairy vetch is used as forage species in semiarid environments and as a legume cover crop in sub-humid and humid regions. Being an incompletely domesticated species, hairy vetch can form spontaneous populations in a new environment. These populations might contain novel and adaptive traits valuable for breeding. Niche occupancy based on geographic occurrence and environmental data of naturalized populations in central Argentina showed that these populations were distributed mainly on disturbed areas with coarse soil texture and alkaline-type soils. Low rainfall and warm temperatures during pre- and post-seed dispersal explained the potential distribution under sub-humid and semiarid conditions from Pampa and Espinal ecoregions. Conversely, local adaptation along environmental gradients did not drive the divergence among recently established Argentinian (AR) populations. The highest genetic diversity revealed by microsatellite analysis was observed within accessions (72%) while no clear separation was detected between AR and European (EU) genotypes, although naturalized AR populations showed strong differentiation with the wild EU accessions. Common garden experiments were conducted in 2014–16 in order to evaluate populations’ germination, flowering, and biomass traits. European cultivars were characterized by low physical seed dormancy (PY), while naturalized AR accessions showed higher winter biomass production. Detected variation in the quantitative assessment of populations could be useful for selection in breeding for traits that convey favorable functions within specific contexts.
Highlights
The Vicia genus, of the Fabaceae family, includes several winter annual legumes, generically grouped as “vetches.” Within this complex, Vicia villosa ssp. villosa Roth, commonly known as hairy vetch (HV), is a relevant member
Naturalized populations of hairy vetch were found in the three monitored regions (Figure 1A), corresponding to Pampa, Espinal, and Shrubs of Plateau and Plains
The area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) score of MaxEnt models, both training and test area under the curve (AUC) values, were 0.957 and 0.956, respectively, indicating that most climatically suitable areas predicted by MaxEnt were highly correlated with the occurrence of natural HV populations
Summary
The Vicia genus, of the Fabaceae family, includes several winter annual legumes, generically grouped as “vetches.” Within this complex, Vicia villosa ssp. villosa Roth, commonly known as hairy vetch (HV), is a relevant member. Villosa Roth, commonly known as hairy vetch (HV), is a relevant member It is native in Europe and West Asia, being introduced as a crop or weed worldwide to temperate climate regions. Hairy vetch is the second most important vetch in agricultural systems worldwide (Francis et al, 1999). It is grown for forage, consumed under direct or indirect grazing, or for green manure. Hairy vetch displays high tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses (Francis et al, 1999) It is one of the recommended cover crop in organic or conservation farming, mainly because it enhances soil nitrogen content by biological fixation (Vanzolini, 2011). HV produces between 2.6 and 6.2 ton ha−1 of above-ground dry biomass (Lawson et al, 2015; Mirsky et al, 2017; Ackroyd et al, 2019)
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