Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) Breeding

Abstract

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is an important cool season legume grown widely in the world due to its palatability as well as its ecological and environmental value in sustainable agriculture and cropping system. As its protein content is higher than other common food legumes, it is mainly harvested in the form of dry seeds for human food and for animal feed worldwide, but its fresh seeds or pods are often used as vegetables in China, India and other countries with rapidly expanding areas. The dry grain, fresh seeds and sprouts of faba bean are a highly nutritional food source for the human diet. Fresh faba bean seeds are used for a variety of savory dishes, and dry grain are used for paste and snacks, while sprouts for traditional food. The dried fresh stems and leaves of faba beans are good fodder for cattle, sheep and pigs. Faba bean flowers contain a large amount of L-DOPA and can be used to make flower tea. Various faba bean cultivation practices like intercropping and rotation are described. Germplasm diversity and conservation studies on faba bean genetic resources, in vitro regeneration and genetic transformation studies of faba bean, are summarized. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been developed for faba bean genetic linkage map construction and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) analysis of important genes, are discussed. Achievements of breeding and the future breeding objectives like winter hardy, heat tolerance, herbicide resistance, double-zero, machine sowing and harvesting, biological nitrogen fixation efficiency, photosynthetic efficiency, flavor and palatability, dual usage and market price are reviewed. Current research initiatives and recommendations for future research, like gene editing, are also illustrated.