Wild Arachis Species, Valuable Germplasm Still to be Known

GUILLERMO SEIJO; ALEJANDRA GARCÍA; SAMOLUK, SERGIO S.; CHALUP LAURA; ALEJANDRA ORTIZ; GRACIELA LAVIA; GERMAN ROBLEDO

Saly

Conferencia; AAGB 2018 Conference; 2018

Wildspeciesrelatedtoagriculturalcropscanincreasetheadaptivecapacityofagriculturalsystemsaround theworld.Theyrepresentalargepoolofgeneticdiversity fromwhich todrawnewallelicvariationrequiredinbreedingprograms.Arachiswildspeciesarenottheexception.NewspeciesarebeingdiscoveredatarateofalmostonespeciesayearsincetheKrapovickas and Gregory monograph was published in 1994. New characters weredescribedforthegenus,andthegeographicdistributionhavebeenextendedformostoftheknown species. Cytogenetic data has helped to arranged them in genome groups andgenomic information was generated for a few of them including the wild relatives thatoriginated peanut. Arachis wild relatives probed to be extremely valuable in providingresistant alleles to peanut commercial varieties for diverse diseases. Unfortunately, wildArachis species are a threatened resource and biological knowledge on themis still verylimited.ExamplesaretheassumptionsthatallArachisspeciesareautogamousandthatallofthemhavethesamereproductiveef4iciency.Moreover,thedelimitationofspeciesisstillvery dif4icult in many cases and the intraspeci4ic and intrapopulation variability, bothmorphological andgenetic,is almost unknown.Here,we review and discuss (i) past andcurrent efforts to generate knowledge on wild Arachis germplasm, (ii), what constraintscontinuetohinderincreaseduseofwildspeciesinbreedingand(iii)whatmeasuresneedtobetakentoimprovetheirprotection,bothinthewildandingenebanks.