Genetic Variability and Divergence Studies on Seed Traits and L-dopa Content of Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC. Accessions

Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC. belongs to the Fabaceae family and is widely distributed across tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Seeds of Mucuna are an industrially important source of natural L-dopa. The present study was intended to screen out the superior Mucuna germplasm that can be utilized for commercial cultivation. A total of 59 accessions of M. pruriens (L.) DC. were evaluated for seed-associated agronomic traits and L-dopa content in the seed. Morphological observations of seed samples revealed a wide variation in seed color patterns, including complete white, black, and striped or mottled. Quantitative traits such as hundred-seed weight (90.30–150.59g), seed length (5–19.3mm), width (2.66–13.00mm), thickness (0.90–8.67mm), length width ratio (1.17–2.26), length thickness ratio (1.50–7.40), width thickness ratio (0.89–6.00), seed geometric diameter (2.34–12.60mm), arithmetic mean diameter (2.88–13.33mm), seed sphericity (41.89–78.75), seed surface area (17.19–498.51mm2), and L-dopa content (1.79–6.05%) were evaluated in order to compare the features of the accessions collected from different places. Furthermore, variability studies have shown that seed size may not be a selection criterion for determining a genotype with high L-dopa content, as there was a negative correlation found between hundred-seed weight and L-dopa content (-0.614**).