Résumé
Highlights: • Functional diversity in Vigna species can be organized into stress-tolerant, ruderal, and competitive strategies. • Wild and domesticated species mainly display distinct trait patterns. • Accessions from the stress-tolerant group display adaptability accross broad temperature and precipitation ranges. • Phenotypic continuum between domesticated and wild species suggests on going domestication process.Abstract: Crop diversification is a key driver towards improved farm resilience and reduced risk in the face of climatic and economic events. Grain legumes have been gaining increasing attention and interest in the past few decades. However, farmers and advisers need references and tools to select the crop species and varieties adapted to specific environments. In this study, we explored the untapped diversity within the Vigna genus that offers numerous diversification possibilities for tropical and sub-tropical agriculture production systems. A field trial was conducted in Morocco, using 368 accessions representing seven cultivated and 30 wild Vigna species. Data of 16 phenological, morpho-physiological and agronomical traits, were collected and used within a functional trait-based analysis to identify functional strategies among genotypes and to relate trait patterns to adaptations to climate of origin. The studied species were categorized into one of the three Grime’s functional groups: competitive (C), stress-tolerant (S) and ruderal (R) species, and the potential role of domestication in shaping traits in these functional groups was examined. Results indicated that trait profiles were shaped by species’ environmental origin, where the most populated biomes were the tropical forest/savanna, in particular for the wild accessions.