Grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is an underutilized pulse crop which can withstand adverse environmental conditions such as drought, heat, salinity, waterlogging, pest and diseases. To facilitate hybridization studies, pollen cryoconservation was attempted in L. sativus. Among the different media combination tested for vitro germination, BK medium with 15% sucrose optimal. Pollen viability at st...

Stories abound about the medical abuses that have come to define medicine and the "pseudo"-neurosciences in the Third Reich. Well known are the Nazi program of euthanasia and the neuroscientific publications that arose from it. Nevertheless, during this widespread perversion of medical practice and science, true medical heroics persisted, even in the concentration camps. In December 1942, inmat...

twenty accessions of cultivated grass pea (lathyrus sativus l.) and wild species of lathyrus l.collected from western and southern regions of iran were evaluated for their mitotic metaphase chromosomalcharacteristics. all populations comprising 16 populations of cultivated l. sativus and 4 wild populations oflathyrus l. were diploid, 2n=2x=14 chromosomes. there were significant variations among...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Neurolathyrism is a non progressive motor neuron disorder engendered by the prolonged over-consumption of Lathyrus sativus (grass pea) seeds which contain a neurotoxic amino acid, β-N oxalyl- L-α, β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP). It is characterized by spastic paraparesis in the hind limbs. The present study was conducted in 105 households (HHs) of Gondia district in Ma...

Lathyrus sativus (grass pea) is a temperate grain legume crop with a great potential for expansion in dry areas or zones that are becoming more drought-prone. It is also recognized as a potential source of resistance to several important diseases in legumes, such as ascochyta blight. Nevertheless, the lack of detailed genomic and/or transcriptomic information hampers further exploitation of gra...

Callus cultures from root explants of Lathyrus sativus L. ‘Derek’ were tested for their morphogenic capacity. Primary explants (fragments of roots) were cultivated on three induction media. We obtained three lines of callus tissue among which we identified two non-embryogenic lines and one embryogenic line. Callus originally cultivated on modified MS medium supplemented with 0.05 mgL picloram, ...

Large numbers of viable protoplasts of pea (Pisum sativum) and grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) were efficiently and reproducibly obtained and, for the first time, fused. Different procedures for fusion were compared, based either on electrofusion (750, 1000, 1250 or 1500 V cm(-1)), or on the use of macro or micromethods with a polyethylene glycol (PEG 6000 or PEG 1540), or a glycine/high pH soluti...

Introduction Knowledge about genetic diversity is a prerequisite of any breeding programme. Inclusion of diverse parents in hybridisation programmes serves the purpose of combining desirable genes in new recombinations. Mahalanobi’s D statistic (7) is a powerful tool in quantifying the degree of divergence at genotypic level. Several workers have used this method to quantify the degree of diver...