Grain characteristics of the collection Lathyrus sativus L. in Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, Serbia

Abstract

Serbian botanical name for Lathyrus sativus is “sastrica”. Variety of folk names for grass pea, such “šoder pasulj”, ”cicor”, “radan”, “sekirče” testify its past prevalence in the diet of local population. Grass pea is usually consumed boiled, combined with vegetables, with or without meat, or as a salad. It was nearly forgotten crop and could rarely be seen on Serbian farms. Recently, grass pea has been reintroduced in Serbia, mostly for the purpose of organic production. It is especially important in diet of patients suffering from diabetes. For the purpose of successful reintroduction, 11 accessions of grass pea cultivated in Serbia were collected and evaluated. Part of the accessions are landraces collected from the territory of Serbia, while several accessions were introduced years ago, mostly from Herzegovina. Evaluated seed traits are: seed size (1000 seed weigh; seed length, width and thickness), seed shape, seed coat surface, seed color and seed coat patterns. Seeds were mainly of medium size with rhomboid or triangular shape. The largest seed had an accession collected from locality Erdevik, laying on the slopes of Fruska gora Mt. Accession with the smallest seed originated from the locality Bački Petrovac. Six accessions had monochrome, mainly cream seeds (except one accession with yellow-green seed) and smooth seed coat surface. The rest of the accessions are mixture of two types of seeds: monochrome (yellowgreen or cream with smooth seed coat surface) and multicolor (brown, streaked and tubercular seed coat).