Biofortification of Pea: Improving Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems

Pea (Pisum sativum L.; 2n = 14) a member of family Leguminosae considered a significant cool-season legume crop globally. Pea is known for its highly nutritional benefits including a valuable source of various proteins, starch, micronutrients, and carbohydrates, which are used as food (including vegetable) and livestock feed. However, in many regions, pea falls short of meeting the nutritional needs of the population due to anti-nutritional factors (including protease inhibitors, lectins, saponins, phytic acid), deficiency in micronutrients, and indigestible oligosaccharides of raffinose family (RFOs). Biofortification aims to enhance the nutritional content of crops, increase the level of vitamins and other micronutrients, and reduce anti-nutrient compounds to fulfill food and nutritional security. Therefore, dedicated research and development efforts utilizing omics resources and omics-based techniques are required to support the rapid development of improved pea cultivars. The establishment of pea reference genome, high-throughput genotyping assays, genetic resource databases, and linked DNA markers provide new tools to study the nutritional traits in pea. This chapter presents a comprehensive review of biofortification techniques to improve pea cultivars through agronomic strategies, conventional breeding techniques, and biotechnological approaches such as marker-assisted selection, genetic engineering, and emerging techniques such as genome editing. Gene editing has great potential and creates new opportunities to optimize nutritional content and agricultural sustainability. This chapter summarizes progress in pea improvement and outlines future directions for accelerating the proclamation of new pea cultivars to meet the increasing hassles on quality and productivity through the use of advanced genomic tools and technologies.