Mungbean, commonly known as green gram, has played a pivotal role as a cheap protein source in regions where access to meat is limited. Spanning over 4,500 years, the cultivation of this humble legume has sustained civilizations throughout its history. While its migration routes and cultivation expansion have been a mystery, a new study reveals insights into the circuitous odyssey of this resilient crop. It employed cutting-edge genomic techniques to trace the evolutionary trajectory of the mung bean, using seeds from three seed banks, the World Vegetable Center in Taiwan, the Australian Diversity Panel, and the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in Russia.

Research unveiled a distinctive path of cultivation and shed light on the factors influencing its expansion. Contrary to previous assumptions based on the geographical proximity between South and Central Asia, genetic evidence suggests that mungbean first spread from South Asia to Southeast Asia, and then finally reached Central Asia, including Western China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia.

Extracted from a post 6 June 2023 by Ileana Wachtel, University of Southern California on Phys.org News.

For the full article, see –

https://phys.org/news/2023-06-unraveling-historic-journey-mung-bean.html

Ong, P-W, Lin Y-P, Chen H-W, Yeh P-M, Anand SS, Lin J, Li J, Noble T, Nair R, Schafleitner R, Samsononova M, Bishop-von-Wettberg E, Nuzhdin S, Ting C-T, Lawn RJ, Lee C-R. 2023. Demographic history and distinct selection signatures of two domestication genes in mungbean. Plant Physiology, 193(2): 1197–1212. https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad356