Ex situ conservation of agro-biodiversity of major food legumes in the Philippines

Abstract

© 2019 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved. The increase in crop productivity brought about by the Green Revolution has inspired the continuous development and release of more profitable varieties in most crops. The adoption of these varieties however, displaced many traditional cultivars and landraces in production areas. On-farm agro-biodiversity have been threatened and/or lost for decades. To address this, the National Plant Genetics Resources Laboratory (NPGRL) collected and conserved a considerable amount of agricultural diversity across the country. Food legumes which include mungbean, peanut, and soybean are among the most important crops conserved at NPGRL. The study aims to: i) elucidate the importance of ex situ conservation in relation to breeding, selection, and crop production; and ii) characterize and assess the agro-biodiversity of three major food legumes conserved in the National repository in one season. Food legumes were characterized at the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) experimental area for one season. Morphological diversity of the accessions was assessed using Shannon-Weaver's Diversity Index (H') for both qualitative and quantitative traits. Based on diversity analyses, mungbean (43 descriptors), has an index (H') ranging from 0 to 0.98 with seed surface luster as the highest. In peanut (42 descriptors), H' ranged from 0 to 0.90 with peg color as the highest. For soybean (41 descriptors), H' ranged from 0 to 0.98 with flower standard color as the highest. The high diversity found in the food legumes accessions indicates their potentials for future use in the legumes breeding programs.

Source or Periodical Title

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science

ISSN

17551307

Document Type

Article

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