The Winged Bean Genome

Abstract

AbstractClimate change, population growth and increasingly homogenised diets are a threat to food security and human nutritional status. There is an urgent need to incorporate highly nutritious crops into the human diet to provide new sources of nutrition, to diversify agriculture and to meet the challenges of climate change. Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L.) DC.) is an underutilised crop with a relatively high protein content, grown in the humid tropic regions. Despite its many strengths, the crop suffers from a number of production, yield and utilisation-related constraints. In this chapter, we discuss the nutritional value of winged bean and how it can be improved by utilising genomic and transcriptomic data. We discuss the importance of identifying genes and gene functions, generating genetic linkage maps and developing molecular markers that could be used to accelerate plant breeding. Considerable genomics resources have been developed in major legumes such as soybean (Glycine max) and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) through transcriptome and genome sequencing. These provide opportunities for comparative genomic studies and translational research to improve minor crops such as winged bean. Winged bean genome sequencing is underway and will be published shortly. This will contribute to breeding improvement efforts. More research is needed to combine genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics data to further improve winged bean for food and nutritional security.