**Author details**

*Legume Crops - Prospects, Production and Uses*

(**Table 5**).

are listed in **Table 6**.

germplasm conserved in the gene banks.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflict of interest**

**4. Conclusions**

all the biological species that can be crossed with the crop but where hybrids are usually sterile. Tertiary gene pool (GP3) comprises those species that can be crossed with the crop with difficulty and where gene transfer is only possible with radical techniques. Another way is taxonomic which is based on taxonomic relationship of CWR with the crop [12]. Gene pools of some of the major legumes are represented

CWRs have provided vital genetic diversity for crop improvement since the twentieth century. They imparted resistance to numerous pests and diseases and tolerance to many abiotic stresses, viz., extreme temperatures, drought, and flood, and to improve nutrition, flavor, color, texture, and yield stability [13]. Almost all modern varieties of crops contain one or more genes derived from a CWR and contributed significantly to the agricultural and horticultural industries and to the world economy [14]. Furthermore, being components of natural ecosystems, they also play a role in functioning and maintaining the ecosystem services. However, many of CWRs remain unexplored. To explore the unexplored potential of CWRs, collection, conservation, characterization, and evaluation are the only powerful ways. Some examples of the use of CWRs in providing resistance to abiotic and biotic stress yield and quality improvement

Genetic resources are recognized as the fourth essential input after water, soil, and light. It is the need of hour to utilize leguminous genetic resources to meet the global challenges like population explosion, malnutrition, and hunger. Legumes are dominated by rice-wheat system in the past with the major focus on cereal production worldwide. This has led to a substantial decrease in research on legumes. In view of the current climate change scenario and environmental disturbances, research on landraces and CWR is strengthened in effective and efficient manner. Legumes have the potential to contribute significantly to ecofriendly agricultural land use and sustainable forage production in the tropics. Earlier, genebanks were focusing on the conservation of genetic resources, but emphasis has been shifted to conservation through utilization. Overall, legume genetic resources provide the new potential climate smart crops, viz., zombi pea, winged bean, and grass pea, and also new alleles which help in developing biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant varieties. It is much needed to identify the bottleneck for the utilization of the valuable germplasm of the legumes. With the advancement of the modern molecular technologies, the trait discovery and the markers linked to the traits need to be explored so that a large-scale screening would become possible and eventually help to reveal the real genetic potential of the

We greatly thank Director of ICAR-NBPGR for his guidance in the management

of legume genetic resources at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi, India.

**10**

Kuldeep Tripathi1 \*, Padmavathi G. Gore1 , Mamta Singh1 , Ravi K. Pamarthi1 , Reena Mehra2 and Gayacharan C1

1 ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, India

2 International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, Food Legumes Research Platform, Sehore, India

\*Address all correspondence to: kuldeep.tripathi@icar.gov.in

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
