Screening techniques and sources of resistance to abiotic stresses in cool-season food legumes

Summary The adaptability and productivity of cool-season food legumes (chickpea, faba bean, lentil, pea) are limited by major abiotic stresses including drought, heat, frost, chilling, waterlogging, salinity and mineral toxicities. The severity of these stresses is unpredictable in field experiments, so field trials are increasingly supplemented with controlled-environment testing and physiological screening. For drought testing, irrigation is used in dry fields and rain-out shelters in damp ones. Carbon isotope discrimination (Δ¹³C) is a well-established screen for drought tolerance in C3 cereal crops which is now being validated for use in grain legumes, but it is relatively expensive per sample and more economical methods include stomatal conductance and canopy temperature. Chickpea lines ICC4958 and FLIP87-59C and faba bean line ILB938 have demonstrated good drought tolerance parameters in different experiments. For frost tolerance, an efficient controlled-environment procedure involves exposing hardened pot-grown plants to sub-zero temperatures. Faba beans Cote d’Or and BPL4628 as well as lentil ILL5865 have demonstrated good freezing tolerance in such tests. Chilling-tolerance tests are more commonly conducted in the field and lentil line ILL1878 as well as derivatives of interspecific crosses between chickpea and its wild relatives have repeatedly shown good results. The timing of chilling is particularly important as temperatures which are not lethal to the plant can greatly disrupt fertilization of flowers. Salinity response can be determined using hydroponic methods with a sand or gravel substrate and rapid, efficient scoring is based on leaf symptoms. Many lines of chickpea, faba bean and lentil have shown good salinity tolerance in a single article but none has become a benchmark. Waterlogging tolerance can be evaluated using paired hydroponic systems, one oxygenated and the other de-oxygenated. The development of lysigenous cavities or aerenchyma in roots, common in warm-season legumes, is reported in pea and lentil but is not well established in chickpea or faba bean. Many stresses are associated with oxidative damage leading to changes in chlorophyll fluorescence, membrane stability and peroxidase levels. An additional factor relevant to the legumes is the response of the symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria to the stress.     

Selection for pod retention and pod indehiscence in lentils

Summary The genetic variation for seed yield losses and the response to selection for reduction of such losses was studied by a six-week delay in the timing of harvest in various segregating populations from four lentil crosses. The bulk segregating populations had previously been subjected to different numbers of selection by means of a delayed harvest. The loss in seed yield from a delayed harvest in the two seasons 1981/82 and 1982/83 accounted for 551 and 105 kg/ha seed, representing 34 and 11% of the yield from a correctly timed harvest respectively. Pod drop accounted for 65% of this loss, whereas dehiscence gave 35% of the loss in both seasons. The parents of cross 4 differed significantly for pod dehiscence, with genotype 74TA 550 showing relative indehiscence. Selection by means of a delayed harvest of bulk populations decreased pod dehiscence, mean seed weight and bulk mean yield.     

Recovery of native plant communities after the control of a dominant invasive plant species, Foeniculum vulgare: Implications for management

The control and/or removal of a dominant invasive species is expected to lead to increases in native species richness and diversity. Small pilot studies were performed on Santa Cruz Island (SCI), California, in the early 1990s to test the efficacy of different methods on the control of Foeniculum vulgare (fennel) and management’s effects on native species recovery. We chose a treatment that showed significant native species recovery, applied it at the landscape scale, and followed its effects on fennel infested plant communities. We tested the hypothesis that results from small-scale studies translate to the landscape level. We found that although the control of fennel translated from the small to landscape scale, decreasing from an average of 60% to less than 3% cover, native species recovery did not occur in the landscape study as it did in the pilot studies. Invasive fennel cover was replaced by non-native grass cover over time. Unexpectedly, fennel cover in untreated fennel plots decreased significantly (though not as drastically) from over 60% cover to just under 40% cover while native species richness in untreated areas increased significantly. The correlation between precipitation and changes in native and non-native species richness and abundance in this study imply that changes in species abundances were highly correlated with environmental fluctuations. The lack of a native seedbank and the accumulation of non-native grass litter likely prevented the recovery of native species in treated areas. Greater vertical complexity found in fennel communities, which increased visitation by frugivorous birds and likely increased native seed dispersal, may have been responsible for the increase in native species richness in the untreated areas. These results suggest that successful invasive species control and native species recovery experiments conducted at small scales may not translate to the landscape level, and active restoration should be an organic component of such large-scale projects.     

Sources of winter hardiness in wild lentil

Summary In high altitude areas (> c. 850 m elevation) in west Asia and north Africa, lentil (Lens culinaris) is grown as a spring crop to avoid severe winter cold. But late fall-sown lentil with winter hardiness has higher yield potential in these areas. In this study a total of 245 accessions of wild lentil, 10 of cultivated lentil and three accessions of Vicia montbretii (syn. L. montbretii) were evaluated for winter hardiness in Syria and Turkey during the 1991/92 season. The absolute minimum temperatures were-16°C in Syria and-18.9°C in Turkey and the susceptible indicators were killed at both locations showing that the cold was sufficient for screening. Although winter hardiness was assessed as percentage of survived plants in Syria and as a visual damage rating on a 1–9 scale in Turkey, there was agreement between the winter hardiness ratings with a correlation of r=–0.56, P<0.001. Accessions of L. culinaris ssp. orientalis exhibited the highest level of winter hardiness, on average; whereas accessions of L. nigricans ssp. ervoides were the most susceptible. Correlations revealed that winter hardiness was concentrated among accessions originating from high elevation areas.     

Evaluation of a wild lentil collection for resistance to vascular wilt

Vascular wilt caused byFusarium oxysporum f. sp.lentis Vasud. & Srin. is the major disease of the cultivated lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus). Host plant resistance is the most practical method of disease management. Wild lentils represent an unexplored potential source for disease resistance and other characters. Screening 219 accessions of wildLens Miller and 2 accessions ofVicia montbretii Fisch. & Mey. (syn.Lens montbretii (Fisch et Mey) Davis et Plitm.) for resistance to a Syrian isolate of this fungus at the seedling stage was conducted under artificial inoculation in a plastic house. Resistance at the reproductive growth stage was confirmed in pots in a plastic house and in a wilt-sick plot. Three accessions each ofLens culinaris ssp.orientalis (Boiss.) Ponert andL. nigricans M.B. Godr. ssp.nigricans Godr. and 2 ofL. nigricans ssp.ervoides (Brign.) Lad. maintained their resistance at the reproductive growth stage in the plastic house. All accessions ofL. culinaris ssp.odemensis Lad. andV. montbretii were susceptible. However, in the sick-plot only three accessions (ILWL 79 & ILWL 113 ofL. culinaris ssp.orientalis and ILWL 138 ofL. nigricans ssp.ervoides) maintained a good level of resistance. Resistance at the seedling stage was often found in accessions collected from northern and western sites of the distribution of the genus at low elevations. The most resistant accessions in the field at the reproductive growth stage were from Syria and Turkey.