Vigna Genome Project. Vigna

Genus Vigna consists of legume crops such as azuki bean as well as a number of wild species. One of the most attractive features of the genus Vigna is the great adaptability of the wild species to severe environmental conditions including high salt (400mM NaCl), acid (pH3) or alkaline (pH10) soil, and drought (deprived of water for 1 month). By figuring out the mechanisms of how they adapt to such environments, it would be possible to generate novel crops tolerant to the stress conditions. Thus we sequenced the whole genomes of 10 wild species of the genus Vigna.