PHYSICAL AND HYDRATION PROPERTIES OF CHICKPEA AND LENTIL SEEDS: CHARACTERIZATION OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES GROWN UNDER DIVERSE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

Legumes species can be used for multiple purposes such as forage, grain, bloom, pharmaceutical, industrial and green manure. Pulses, such as lentils, beans, peas and chickpeas, play a crucial role in fulfilling the nutritional requirements of the growing population and can be processed in different ways. The use of genetic resources in breeding programs aims to improve the quality of food products from both a nutritional and technological point of view. We analyzed seed quality of 24 and 41 different genotypes of chickpea and lentil, respectively; seeds used for the phenotypic characterization were obtained in designed experimental field trials (with three replicates), to allow estimation of the variance components and trait heritabilities. The following qualitative traits were considered: seed weight, size, volume, seed coat, hydration, shape and color. The characterization of such materials is essential to provide useful information on the traits of different accessions to allow their exploitation in breeding to develop novel varieties carrying interesting features such as improved seed quality. High variability among the analyzed accessions was highlighted for all traits indicating the possibility to use the most interesting genotypes as sources for breeding. At the same time, high heritability estimates were observed, indicating that the environmental effect is minimal on characters and the possibility for breeding to make progress in selection. Correlations among traits were also found reflecting important trade-off that producers need to take into consideration during processing. Moreover, we test the potential genotype-by-environment interaction (GEI) which is another important pre-requisite for recommendation of selection for large-scale production. Performing qualitative analyses, we obtained data that can be exploited for a wide range of sectors such as canning industry, pasta processing, baked good industry or for the preparation of ready to eat products. In particular, the use of legume flours for the production of pasta is an innovative and practical solution to increase the consumption of proteins of vegetable origins. The methods used in this work can be exploited for larger and different legume populations and can be extended to several aspects. The use of the multispectral imaging technique has been proven to be useful in providing important information about the seed quality traits and phenotyping parameters in the study of various morphological traits of different varietal seeds.