Estimation of ODAP contents and heritability of quantitative traits in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) accessions from North-Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is a popular legume in Ethiopia that serves as a protein source to replace chickpeas and field peas. It is a great way to address nutrition and food security in the growing population. However, one of the major issues is that it produces Oxalyl diaminopropionic acid (ODAP), which causes neurological disorders in humans and animals. The study aimed to measure the ODAP, heritability, and genetic advance of quantitative traits in northwest Ethiopian grass pea accessions. The field experiment was carried out during the 2019 rainy season, utilizing a 5x5 lattice design to assess the ODAP and non-yield quantitative traits of grass pea accessions at Ebonyi State University, Nigeria. This study showed a highly significant difference between accessions for all traits except petiole length. This finding discovered high heritability, genetic advance, genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation for ODAP, branch bearing length, number of secondary branches, days to flowering, plant height, and primary branch length. The average ODAP value was 0.44 percent, with values ranging from 0.17 to 0.90 percent. Only two of the 25 accessions 26627 and 238945 displayed safe ODAP values of <0.2. These findings may be important for the development of low-ODAP grass-pea cultivars.

Keywords:

• Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L)
• food security
• ODAP
• heritability
• genetic advance

Reviewing Editor:

• Dr Manuel Tejada, Cogent Food & Agriculture (Open Research) [email protected]

Subjects:

• Nutrition, Toxicology, Biotechnology, Agriculture & Environmental Sciences, Plant & Animal Ecology, Biology

Acknowledgments

Thanks a lot, to the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Bioscience at Ebonyi State University (EBSU), Abakaliki, Nigeria, and the GENEs Intra-Africa academic mobility project for hosting and funding this research. I’m grateful to the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI) for giving us the grass pea accessions.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design and provided the last consent for publication. MDA designed the experiments, executed the experiment, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript; AA was the main mentor and revised the manuscript; OH and AC were co-supervisors and revised the manuscript; ATD, ZA, and TAA revised the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors state there are no issues with money or competing interests regarding the work.

Data availability statement

The data backing up this finding can be obtained through the corresponding author, who will provide it upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported and funded by the GENEs Intra-Africa Mobility Scheme of the European Union with ref number [EBSU/2018/GENEs/MSc/SCH-M/03]. Author M. D. A. has received research support from the GENEs Intra-Africa Mobility Scheme project. We declare that no funds and other support were received in the preparation of the manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Desalegn Abebe Mekonen

Desalegn Abebe Mekonen M.Sc. in Agricultural Biotechnology, leads the plant tissue culture and biotechnology research case team and works as an associate researcher at Amhara Agricultural Research Institute/ARARI in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. He studied biotechnology as well as agricultural biotechnology. He currently works at the Amhara Agricultural Research Institute. Furthermore, he has written over two articles in reputed journals. His research interests include genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, gene editing, plant-microbe interaction, crop genetic diversity, plant tissue culture, plant breeding, and molecular breeding.