Maxim Russo: Sweet Lupine

Maxim Russo Tatianab/Flickr lupins

Lupine is not only a spectacular decorative plant that decorates gardens with its flowers. It serves as a valuable feed plant, since its seeds are a rich source of protein. Lupine can eat people - for example, we can make vegetarian burgers without soy out of it. In addition, this plant tolerates drought well and undemanding to the soil. But most varieties of lupine have a bitter taste, which restrains the spread of this culture.

Now, thanks to the new tool that quickly determines the mudtants with the desired properties, the researchers have found a way to quickly sweeten wild lupine. Therefore, breeders can get a wider range of edible lupine and create a cheaper and environmentally friendly alternative to other cultures with a high protein content, such as soy. Lupines are the only plants capable of protein content in their seeds (up to 44 %) to compete with soy.

In countries where Lupine seeds are traditionally used in national cuisine (Brazil, Egypt, Algeria, Greece), they are previously soaked for several days, regularly changing water to get rid of bitterness. The oldest evidence of Lupine’s use were discovered in the tombs of the pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty, where they found seeds of the species Lupinus digitatus . In the era of the Roman Empire, Lupine spread widely through the Mediterranean.

The inhabitants of Egypt have still preserved love for Lupine. There he is known by the Arab name “Termes”, it is sold in the markets and a manner as an appetizer, especially during the Feast of Sham-en-Nassim in early spring.

The American appearance of Lupine ( lupinus mutabilis ) was grown by the pre -mining inhabitants of modern Peru. The caves of his seeds and leaves, dated approximately the VI - VII centuries BC, are exhibited at the Lima National Museum. Lupine has become one of the popular cultures in the Inca state. Lupines were also used by the indigenous people of North America, for example, the people of Javapai (Arizona).

Lupine large -scale cultivation appeared relatively recently. Only in the 1930s, breeders discovered mutant plants with a small amount of alkaloids or without them, which eliminated the need for prolonged soaking of seeds before use (they were called "sweet lupins"). The father of sweet Lupine was the German breeder Rainhold von Zengbush (1898–1985). In the USSR, low-alkaloid varieties of Lupine were obtained by scientists of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Planting and Breeders of the Novozybkovskaya and Minsk Experienced Stations. In 1987, the All-Russian Research Institute of Lupine was created on the basis of the Bryansk Experimental Station . Its employees brought out more than three dozen varieties.

Since the 1960s, the methods of traditional selection were bred by the varieties of sweet lupins, characterized by early flowering and the lack of scattering of seeds when opening a mature pod, which facilitated harvesting. Now lupins are grown in a number of European and African countries, as well as in Chile, Peru and Ecuador. The world leader in lupine cultivation is Australia, where his planting occupies an area of ​​0.6-0.7 million hectares.

Special measures are being taken in Australia to avoid cross -pollination of wild bitter and cultivated low -alkaloid lupines. A wide quarantine zone is created around Lupine's plantings so that wild pollen transferred by the wind does not affect the toxicity of the crop. In Ethiopia, due to the acute lack of protein feed for animals, varieties of sweet white lupine, adapted to the local climate, were recently bred. Researchers continue to improve sweet varieties, but they also want to dominate wild, bitter species with valuable properties, such as a higher protein content or resistance to disease.

The biochemistry of the synthesis of alkaloids remained a mystery, slowing the work of breeders. Researchers suspect that in the development of alkaloids that help protect plants from herbivores, participates up to nine enzymes. Only two of them were known to scientists. Plant biochemistry specialists from Copenhagen University Fernando Gee-Flores and Davide Mancinotti found that the third enzyme-acetyltransfeza-also participates in the synthesis of alkaloids. Looking at the White Lupine ( lupinus albus ), a plant that has both sweet and bitter varieties, scientists suspected that a mutation in the acetyltransferase gene can cause sweetness, not allowing plants to produce bitter compounds. They confirmed this, having studied hundreds of copies of the White Lupine.

In another experiment, Ju-Flores and Mancinotti created a similar mutation in the bitter variety of another cultivated species-a narrow-leaved lupine ( L. angustifolius ). They turned to a specialized company to treat about 100,000 lupine seeds with a substance that causes a chemical mutagenesis. Then, the company Traitomic has recently developed a tool called Find -it to quickly find among the resulting plants those that occurred only in the acetyltransferase gene. When growing, these mutant plants gave seeds with alkaloids by 99 % less. Their taste was comparable to commercial varieties of lupine.

The combination of chemical mutagenesis and found -it will help breeders quickly “sweeten” the wild species of lupine with the desired properties. Andian Lupine ( L. Mutabilis ), for example, contains even more protein than soybeans. And since the European Union excluded the chemical mutage from the scope of the rules of genetic modification, this approach can accelerate the development of new crops that are acceptable for consumers who do not like genetically modified organisms. The EU promotes the use of Lupine and other legumes, because the member countries want to grow more protein in the northern climate, for which lupine is well suited and import less soybean beans of the Amazon region, where forests are cut down for agricultural needs. “We think that the lupins will play an important role in this future, and our discovery will help,” says Fernando Ju-Flores.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.