Table 1.

Recent studies exploiting the exotic genetic resources of leguminous wild relatives for legume crop improvement using various biotechnological approaches

Trait classification	Specific traits of interest	Wild leguminous species	Research strategy	References
Abiotic stress tolerance	Salt tolerance	Wild Vigna species	Phenotype characterization, genetic mapping	[14–17]
		Glycine soja	Gene cloning, metabolomics	[11••,18–22]
	Cold tolerance	Wild Cicer species	Phenotype characterization	[81,82]
	Drought tolerance	Wild Cicer, Arachis, common bean, and Lentil species	Phenotype characterization, GWAS	[8,26••,28,81]
Biotic stress resistance	Nematodes (Heterodera glycines, Meloidogyne arenaria) resistance	G. soja, perennial Glycine species	Phenotype characterization, RNA-Seq, GWAS, KASP, genetic mapping	[32,33,75,83]
		Wild Arachis species	Phenotype characterization	[36,37]
	Pathogen, late leaf spot and rust resistance	Wild Arachis spieces	Gene cloning	[84••]
	Stemphylium, Ascochyta, anthracnose, and Stemphylium blight resistance	Wild Lentil species	Genetic mapping	[38–41]
	Aphid resistance	G. soja	Genetic mapping	[3,43–45]
	Butterfly and Plume moth resistance	Wild Cajanus species	Genetic mapping	[46,47]
Yield-related	100-seed weight	G. soja	Genetic mapping, RNA-seq, gene function analysis	[12,50,51,65]
Seed composition	Protein	G. soja, perennial Glycine species	1-DE, GWAS	[64,85]
	Oil	G. soja	RNA-seq, phenotype characterization	[64,65]
Domestication	Seed weight, pod dehiscence, flowering, plant height, seed coat color	Wild soybean, lupin, pigeonpea, cowpea species	NGS, microarray	[2,86,87,88•,89•,90]
Metabolomics	Flavonoids, phenolics, isoflavones	G. soja	Genetic mapping	[91,92]
	Saponin	G. soja	LC–MS	[66,67]
Genome sequencing	Whole genome, plastome	G. latifolia, G. soja, G. gracilis	NGS	[93,94,95•]
Ecology	Adaptive traits, drought, salt	G. soja, wild chickpea species	NGS, GWAS	[26••,73•,74]

Note: GWAS, genome-wide association study; RNA-Seq: RNA sequencing; KASP assay (Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR assay): is a fluorescence-based genotyping strategy to distinguish two different alleles; 1-DE: 1-dimensional gene electrophoresis; NGS: next-generation sequencing; LC–MS: liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry.