123Chapter 6
Combined Abiotic Stress in Legumes
Santiago Signorelli, Esteban Casaretto, Jorge Monza and Omar Borsani
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
R. Mahalingam (ed.), Combined Stresses in Plants, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07899-1_6
O. Borsani () · E. Casaretto · J. Monza · S. Signorelli
Laboratorio de Bioquímica, Departamento de Biología Vegetal, Facultad de Agronomía,
Universidad de la República, Av. E. Garzón 780, 12900 Montevideo, Uruguay
e-mail: [email protected]
E. Casaretto
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Monza
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Signorelli
e-mail: [email protected]
6.1 Legume Family: Agronomic Relevance
A major source of protein in the human diet is of animal origin. The production of
beef and mutton is based on natural pastures or supplementation based on grains
(feedlot). Sown pastures can be monospecific or may be ultrasimple, simple or
complex of different species of the same botanical family or a family of different
botanical blends. Within the latter group, are mixtures of grasses and legumes.
From the point of view of human and animal consumption, legumes belonging
to the subfamily Papilonideae are relevant. This includes seeds and forage legumes
such as peanut, beans, chickpea, broad beans, lentils, soybean, among others. Some
species of the genus Medicago, Lotus and Adesmia can be used as forage or green
manure, thus enhancing the contents of nitrogen in the soils.
Forage legumes have been widely spread in the world due to the great agro-
nomic importance that they possess. The species of this plant family are an invalu-
able component of pastures, mainly due to their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen
through symbiotic association with several bacteria collectively called rhizobia.
Second, legumes have a high nutritional value, especially proteins and minerals
(Ca+2 and Mg+2), which makes them essential for the production of forage. Legume
crops also play a critical role as main protein sources in vegetarian diets. Tolerance