The Genetic Potential of Moroccan Lentil Landraces

Lentil landraces have been on-farm conserved in Mor occo for home-consumption and for their adaptation potential to specific environment constraints. Land races might constitute sources of optional genes of interest linked to environmental stresses resilience add to nutritiona l quality traits valuable for lentil crop genetic i mprovement. Thus, the current study aims to assess the available genetic diversity among eight lentil landraces collected fr om the main lentil cropped areas in Morocco by using SDS-PAGE and determ inate their nutritional value compared to four impr oved varieties. Results evidenced the genetic richness of M roccan’s landraces according to the range of pol ymorphism rate (17.5% 80%), allelic richness (1.100 1.775), ex p cted heterozygosity(0.044 0.334) and Shannon-We aver's genetic diversity Index (0.072-0.482). In addition, a large range of nutrients content variability was recorde in regards to crude proteins (26.8 33.8%), total carbohydrate (46.458.3%), neutral fibers (39.7-46.4%), lipids content (1.13-2.10 mg/100g) composed mostly of unsaturated fatty acid (83.9%) r evealing the healthy source of lentils. The major c ompounds of total phenols (7.60 mg/100g) are the condensed tannins (6 .04mg/g DM) which concentrated mainly in seed coat ( 67%). The large range variability of micronutrients concentra tion as iron (6.57-8.26), magnesium(102.0-126.8), z inc (3.74-4.83), calcium (44.8-55.8), phosphorus(431.4-454.1), potas sium (922.0-956.5) and manganese (1.27-1.37) reveal ed the sustainability of local genetic cores in providing rich and healthy nutrient food with high potential i n developing new varieties resilient to climate change.