Abstract
In sub-Saharan Africa, grain legumes (pulses) are essential food sources and play an important role in sustainable agriculture. Among the major pulse crops, the native cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) and introduced common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) stand out. This paper has two main goals. First, we provide a comprehensive view of the available genetic resources of these genera in Africa, including data on germplasm collections and mapping biodiversity-rich areas. Second, we investigate patterns of physicochemical and cytogenomic variation across Africa to explore the geographical structuring of variation between native and introduced beans. Our results revealed that 73 Vigna and 5 Phaseolus species occur in tropical regions of Africa, with 8 countries accounting for more than 20 native species. Conversely, germplasm collections are poorly represented when compared to the worldwide collections. Regarding the nuclear DNA content, on average, V. unguiculata presents significantly higher values than P. vulgaris. Also, V. unguiculata is enriched in B, Mg, S, and Zn, while P. vulgaris has more Fe, Ca, and Cu. Overall, our study suggests that the physicochemical and cytogenomic diversity of native Vigna species is higher than previously thought, representing valuable food resources to reduce food insecurity and hunger, particularly of people living in African developing countries.
Highlights
In sub-Saharan Africa, grain legumes are essential food sources and play an important role in sustainable agriculture
Our study identified 73 Vigna species and 5 Phaseolus species occurring in Africa (Fig. 1a), representing 69.5% and 5.6% respectively of the total number of species currently accepted
Thirteen of them are endemic, occurring in only one country, for instance: V. angivensis, V. bosseri, V. keraudrenii, and V. microsperma occur in Madagascar; V. mendesii and V. ramanniana in Angola; and V. monantha and V. somaliensis in Somalia
Summary
In sub-Saharan Africa, grain legumes (pulses) are essential food sources and play an important role in sustainable agriculture. In many Latin American and African countries, common bean (P. vulgaris) is the most economically important source of p rotein[10] It has its center of origin in the Mesoamerican r egion[11] and was probably first introduced in eastern Africa by the Portuguese in the sixteenth c entury[12]. The highest diversity of the genus Vigna is found in sub-Saharan Africa, namely in Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Republic of South Africa[14,15,16] This genus has 105 accepted species[9] distributed across tropical regions and includes important legume crops such as V. radiata (mung bean) and V. unguiculata (cowpea), as well as several neglected and underutilized crops such as V. aconitifolia (moth bean) and V. subterranea (bambara groundnut)[17]. Its remarkable ability to tolerate abiotic stresses (i.e. drought and high temperatures)[14,19] and the significant amount of dietary protein (18–35%), vitamins, and minerals it contains, make this kind of beans extremely important both economically and socially across sub-Saharan Africa, which suffers from a chronic protein s hortage[20,21]
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