This study was carried out to investigate the utilization value of legume crops collected in tropical and subtropical areas. We examined agronomic traits to assess domestic adaptability and evaluated useful components of foreign legumes. We used a total of 201 genetic resources of three legumes, consisting of 68 lentils, 72 chickpeas and 61 guars. The average number of days to flowering of the three legumes ranged from 56.7 to 60.8 days; the shortest in guar and longest in chickpea. The average number of days to growth of the three legumes ranged from the shortest 86.8 days in lentil, to the longest 163.9 days in guar. The maturation period of the three legumes lasted from the end of May until mid-September, based on sowing in March. However, the average yield of lentil was very low, ranging from 0.5 g to 30.6 g, with an average 16.4 g based on 10 plants per accession. The average 100 seed weight of the three legumes was 2.2 g for lentil, 22.9 g for chickpea, and 3.8 g for guar. The crude protein content ranged from 14.1% to 32.4% with an average of 20.4%, the highest for guar and the lowest for chickpea. The average crude oil content in the three legume crops was generally low, ranging from 0.8% in lentil, to 4.3% in chickpea. The average dietary fiber content in the three legume crops varied from 15.7% to 50.7%. Guar was the highest source of fiber, followed by chickpea (19.3%) and lentil (15.7%). From the agricultural traits analysis, chickpea and guar could grow domestically. However, lentil was difficult to flower and fruit normally during the warmer season after May. Therefore, lentil should be considered for late summer cropping during the cool season. The physicochemical properties of the three legumes seem to be useful as they are similar to, or better than, those of the control common bean.

This study was investigated to develop mass evaluation system for the contents of crude protein, oil and fatty acid in soybean germplasm using NIRS. NIRS equations were created with 345 soybeans, multiple correlation coefficients of crude protein, oil, palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid between data obtained from NIRS and quantitative analysis were 0.983, 0.969, 0.592, 0.514, 0.978, 0.961 and 0.957, respectively. Equation statistics indicated that contents of crude protein, oil and unsaturated fatty acid except palmitic and stearic acid in soybean seed were suitable for determination by NIRS. Those NIRS equations were applied to examine crude protein, oil and unsaturated fatty acid of 854 soybean landraces from Korea. The average contents and ranges of crude protein and oil were 39.2% with a range of 33.7-47.0% and 15.0% with a range of 9.8-20.3%, individually. In addition, those of oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid were 21.4% with a range of 12.1-30.2%, 55.6% with a 47.8-62.3% and 8.1% with a range of 5.9-10.7% respectively. We conducted quantitative analysis to reconfirm with IT154552 (45.1%) and IT023955(46.9%) above 45% of crude protein, the results were similar from NIRS (45.2%, 47.0%). NIRS data for protein from this study made no difference with lab data, which would be useful for mass evaluation. There was negative correlation (-0.203) between crude protein and oil, positive correlation (0.379) between crude oil and oleic acid, and significantly negative correlation (-0.879) between oleic and linoleic acid.

This study was conducted to compare the agricultural characteristics of total 444 common bean accessions from Korea (296), China (76), and El Salvador (72). Days to flowering were ranged from 41 to 83 days with an average of 61 days. Days to sowing to maturing were ranged from 86 to 143 days with an average of 104 days. Common beans from El Salvador tend to bloom and mature 3 to 7 days earlier than Korea and China accessions. In growth habit, over 50% of Korea and China accessions were indeterminate and climbing type, but 90.1% from El Salvador were Semi-determinate and climbing type. Qualitative traits were much different among three countries. Eighty-two percentage of immature pod colors were dark pink from El Salvador, but many of those were pale yellow from Korea (77.6%) and China (61.8%). Seed shapes were divided into four types of round, oval, cubic and kidney type, and the highest percentage of those were 30.4% with kidney type. The highest of those was 36.6% with oval type from Korea, 55.3% with kidney type from China and 79.2% with cubic type from El Salvador. Morphological characteristics of common bean from El Salvador were much different from those of Korea and China, which is necessary to collect more germplasm from its native and expand genetic diversity of common beans. Four hundred thirty-five common beans from Korea, China and El Salvador were analyzed using SSR markers. Ninety-two alleles were detected with a lowest of 6 at the BM161, BM181 and a highest of 18 at the BM154, BM160. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.72. To similar with population size among three countries, 292 Korean accessions divided four replications with 73 accessions. As a result genetic diversity was the highest of 0.73 in Chinese populations, while the lowest of 0.48 in El Salvador populations.