Skip to main content

The Winged Bean Genome

Winged Bean—One Species Supermarket

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Underutilised Crop Genomes

Abstract

Climate change, population growth and increasingly homogenised diets are a threat to food security and human nutritional status. There is an urgent need to incorporate highly nutritious crops into the human diet to provide new sources of nutrition, to diversify agriculture and to meet the challenges of climate change. Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L.) DC.) is an underutilised crop with a relatively high protein content, grown in the humid tropic regions. Despite its many strengths, the crop suffers from a number of production, yield and utilisation-related constraints. In this chapter, we discuss the nutritional value of winged bean and how it can be improved by utilising genomic and transcriptomic data. We discuss the importance of identifying genes and gene functions, generating genetic linkage maps and developing molecular markers that could be used to accelerate plant breeding. Considerable genomics resources have been developed in major legumes such as soybean (Glycine max) and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) through transcriptome and genome sequencing. These provide opportunities for comparative genomic studies and translational research to improve minor crops such as winged bean. Winged bean genome sequencing is underway and will be published shortly. This will contribute to breeding improvement efforts. More research is needed to combine genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics data to further improve winged bean for food and nutritional security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Niki Tsoutsoura .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Tsoutsoura, N. et al. (2022). The Winged Bean Genome. In: Chapman, M.A. (eds) Underutilised Crop Genomes . Compendium of Plant Genomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00848-1_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics