Use made of wild legume relatives in breeding

Presently vast genetic resources are available for improvement of the main crops used by humans and animals. The ex-situ collections safeguard those resources collected in the past, although not all collections are safe even today as far as personnel and facilities are concerned. Use of in-situ collections is feasible but meeting with obstacles. Free accessibility is not as straightforward as has been in the past. Apart from the cultivated accessions of crops, wild relatives have always attracted breeders, for these contribute many useful traits. Their genetic background, particularly of species in the secondary or tertiary genepool, makes transfer difficult requiring new techniques to effectuate gene transfers. There have been many attempts and evaluation and conservation of wild relatives is usually a task taken up by most genebanks. Genetic modification, the modern way of transferring wanted genes, has barely begun for the legume food crops. This paper presents some examples of successful use made of wild relatives of chickpea, pigeonpea, fababean and lentil for breeding during the past decennia