Preliminary characterization and identification of genetic integrity of velvet bean germplasm in IAARD-ICABIOGRAD gene bank

Velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens [L.] DC.) is a tropical legume native to Africa and tropical Asia. In Indonesia, this plant is not widely cultivated, although, in some areas in Java, the community processed and fermented the pulse into a food called tempeh benguk. Besides being alternative for protein source, velvet bean can be used as herbal medicine. For decades, IAARD-ICABIOGRAD Gene Bank has been conserved the germplasm of velvet bean from some areas in Indonesia. However, morphological variability of the germplasm has not been reported. The research aimed to describes of phenotypic diversity among velvet bean accessions and focuses on morpho-agronomical characters. A total of 14 characters were observed from 9 accessions using plant descriptor. During the characterization, we found genetic mixture under the same accession. Therefore, we split these mixtures into different accession and assigned a new accession number for them, thus total accessions to be analyzed were 13 accessions. From clustering analysis, we found that these accessions were grouped into four clusters. Accession Koro Rawe Wonogiri was found to be the most distinct genotypes among accessions observed. Further comprehensive characterization should be conducted to reveal more information about diversity among velvet bean germplasm in IAARD-ICABIOGRAD Gene Bank.