Cross-species transferability of ssr markers for analyzing genetic diversity of different vicia species collections

© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Legumes play an essential role in sustainable agriculture due to their ability to fix nitrogen and high protein content. Vicia is a relevant genus of the Fabaceae family that includes important crop species, such as V. faba and V. sativa, but also other species considered minor crops. They are mainly used as animal feed and usually cope resiliently with extreme conditions; therefore, they could play an essential role in sustainable agriculture under the present scenario of climate change and growing population. However, the scarcity of commercial cultivars limits their use. The Spanish National Plant Genetic Resources Center has collections of several species of the genus Vicia, including international landraces, which could be an essential source of biodiversity for breeding programs. These seed resources are underutilized due to the limited availability of characterization data, including the lack of molecular markers for these species. In this study, we analyzed the cross-transferability of SSR (simple sequence repeat) molecular markers from V. sativa and V. ervilia to distinct species of the genus Vicia. We also used heterologous validated markers for the genotypic characterization and genetic diversity analysis of almost 500 accessions of three undercharacterized Vicia collections: V. articulata (one-flower vetch), V. ervilia (bitter vetch), and V. narbonensis (narbon bean or French vetch). Subsequently, these molecular data were integrated with passport and agromorphological data to select representative varieties from these Vicia collections and establish core collections, with minimum loss of genetic diversity versus the Spanish total collections. The characterization of these legume collections is an essential step from an economic and ecological point of view to obtain selected Vicia varieties to be used in sustainable agriculture.

This research was supported by grants RTI2018-094037-R-I00 and PDI2021-122138OR-I00 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER; UE) and by the “Severo Ochoa Program for Centres of Excellence in R&D” (Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain, grant CEX-2020-000999-S to the CBGP). CSIC partially supports open-access publication fees.

With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX-2020-000999-S).

Peer reviewed