The soluble sugar content of legume seeds affects the final flavor of the legume and legume products. The purpose of this study was to develop a rapid, simple, and low-cost colorimetric method for high-throughput screening of sucrose content in legume seeds. This colorimetric method was based on the enzymatic reactions of invertase (INV) and glucose oxidase (GOD). Briefly, 20 different soybean and cowpea varieties were used in this study. For sucrose extraction, solvent-to-sample ratios of 10:1 and 5:1 were found to result in optimal absorbance values for determining sucrose content in soybean and cowpea, respectively. The extraction efficiency was also evaluated under various extraction temperatures (25℃ and 50℃) and incubation times (15 minutes, 2 hours, 8 hours, and 24 hours) and the sucrose content was found to increase with increasing temperature and time. Accordingly, the optimal extraction conditions were 24 hours of incubation at 50℃. Under this condition, the GOD/INV method had significant positive correlations (r = 0.91** for soybean and r = 0.87** for cowpea) with the high-performance liquid chromatography method. Overall, this colorimetric method is a fast, simple, and inexpensive tool for quantitative determination of sucrose content in legumes.

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Cowpea is an annual legume crop; although it is an essential food in developing countries, cowpea is now grown worldwide. For the genetic improvement of plants, flowering time is one of the major selection criteria. In general, flowering is regulated by photoperiod and temperature, along with the interaction between environmental factors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the candidate genes associated with flowering time using genome-wide association study (GWAS). To investigate the flowering time-related genes, 384 cowpea germplasms were genotyped with 51,128 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The main genetic component of days to flowering (DTF) was analyzed using genome association and prediction integrated tool (GAPIT) and elastic-net analyses. From the GAPIT and elastic-net analyses, a total of 23 SNPs were significantly associated with DTF among five (chr. 2, 3, 7, 9, and 11) and seven (chr. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9) different chromosomes, respectively. Based on our analysis, Vigun01g084000, Vigun01g227200, Vigun02g062600, and Vigun03g296800 were considered the major candidate genes that were significantly associated with DTF in cowpea. These results confirmed that DTF might be controlled by multiple genes affecting early flowering, delaying flowering time, repressing the transition to flowering, etc. This study will potentially contribute to effective DTF genomic selection in plant breeding to better understand the genetic basis and explore the mechanism of flowering time.

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Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) is one of the important legume crops in which all stages of plant growth are used in human food and animal feed. In this study, morphological and biochemical changes were investigated in cowpea plants exposed to proton-beams and gamma-rays. ‘Okdang’ cultivar seeds were irradiated with 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 Gy of gamma-rays and proton-beams. The gamma-ray and proton-beam irradiations significantly delayed emergence period, but had small effects on emer-gence rates. Compared to a control, the proton-beam treatments showed a significant decrease in survival rate above 200 Gy. The gamma-ray treatments significantly reduced survival rate above 300 Gy. The Lethal Dose 50 (LD₅₀) for both irradiations were 200-300 Gy. Plant height and fresh shoot weight tended to decrease with increasing radiation levels. The Reduction Dose 50 (RD₅₀) of plant height was between 100 and 200 Gy for the proton-beam and 200 to 300 Gy for the gamma-ray treatments. The RD₅₀ of fresh shoot weight was expected to be 500 Gy or higher for the proton-beam and gamma-ray treatments. The malonaldehyde (MDA) content in both treatments were slightly decreased at 200 Gy compared to a control, but increased at 300 Gy. Overall, antioxidant enzymes reacted more to proton-beams than to gamma-rays. However, gamma-rays appear to have a greater effect on chlorophyll content than proton-beams. Our research will be valuable as a basic research comparing the mutagenic effects on cowpea induced by two ionizing radiations.

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