Common Beans and Abiotic Stress Challenges

Abstract

Legumes are well recognized for their nutritional and health benefits as well as for their impact in the sustainability of agricultural systems. The threatening scenario imposed by climate change highlights the need for concerted research approaches in order to develop crops that are able to cope with environmental stresses, while increasing yield and quality. Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) plays a significant role in human diets around the world, especially in developing countries and particularly in Asian Sub continent. It is very rich in protein, dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Common beans face major production challenge in the form of various abiotic stresses like drought, cold temperature and salinity. Abiotic stresses play a major role in determining overall returns and also affects the differential distribution of the plant species across different types of environments. These stresses hamper production potential of beans and result in declining of final harvests. These traits are very complex in their expression behavior and their per se inheritance from one generation to next one. Abiotic stress resilience is most of the times governed by polygenic nature of inheritance and often conditioned by multiple factor interacting mechanisms right from physiological, biochemical and genetical processes. Enough has to be explored regarding effect severity and crop stage susceptibility against drought or moisture stress and to optimize the severity of stress to be put on in the field. This review draft will consider different aspects of common bean with respect to different prevailing abiotic stresses, and will suggest an better plant ideotype with a summation of most desirable traits to handle effectively with the unpredictability of abiotic stress, and their heavy impact.