Evaluation of Lablab Purpureus (L.) Sweet Germplasm Using Yield and Quality Traits
Abstract The crops that are not commercially grown or widely traded are known as underutilized or unusable crops. Most of the legumes have come under these categories. Giving importance to such neglected and underutilized crops is an effective way to maintain a diverse and healthy diet and to combat micronutrient deficiencies. Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet is one of the most important underutilized legume vegetable crops, which exhibits broad genetic variability in multiple characteristics such as the habit, pigmentation of the stem, and color of the pod. In the past, researchers paid very little attention to the systematic crop improvement of L.purpureus. In the present study, fifty accessions of L. purpureus were collected from different places of Kerala and Tamil Nadu and analyzed for yield, yield contributing characters, and biochemical factors. Nutritional and anti-nutritional factors were analyzed using the standard protocol. The accessions exhibited significant variations for all the characters tested. The nutritional content of all the accessions were found to be high, whereas anti-nutritional factors were very low. The differences in phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation was compared for different traits, and it was found to be very narrow for almost all the characters studied. The fifty genotypes involved in the study varied in the number of pod/ inflorescence, length and width of the pod, number of flower/ inflorescence, and length of the peduncle. So these observations can be used as a baseline data for the selection of parental lines for future improvement of Lablab purpureus.