Micromorphology of Some Legume Seeds in Lebanon and their Conservation Status

Abstract

Seed morphology and seed-coat micromorphology provide useful characters for the taxonomic classification of taxa of the Fabaceae family, particularly in tribes where intraspecific and interspecific relationships among wild and cultivated species remain complex. For the first time, this study aims to, highlight the distinguishing seed-coat features of selected Cicer, Lens and Pisum species in Lebanon as taxonomically significant features, support the placement of Cicer in its own monogeneric tribe, Lens and Pisum characteristics are in line with the features of Vicieae tribe while noting the synonymy between Pisum sativum and Lathyrus oleraceus can be supported using SEM-based seed-coat assessment. Morphological and micromorphological observations revealed the interspecific variation between wild and cultivated taxa of Cicer, slight intraspecific variation in Lens, while the highest degree of intraspecific variation was apparent in the Pisum genus at the accession-level. In addition, this study demonstrated that the move of P. sativum to the Lathyrus genus is plausible as similarities in seed-coat features were detected such as the ribbing and stellate-papillae seed-coat pattern. Overall, this study proved the importance of SEM-based studies on seed-coat micromorphology in the classification of taxa. Future studies should include a larger number of Lebanese accessions, protect areas of prevalence of wild Pisum species to conserve the characteristics contributing to the high degree of intraspecific variation, and integrate molecular analyses to further confirm the taxonomic significance of these micromorphological features.