Atmospheric CO concentration affects the life cycle, yield, and fruit quality of early maturing edible legume cultivars.

Background: Elevated CO usually reduces levels of proteins and essential micronutrients in crops. The adoption of early maturing varieties may minimize the deleterious effect of climate change on farming activities. Legumes stand out for their high nutritional quality, so the objective was to study whether the atmospheric CO concentration affected the growth, yield, and food quality of early maturing cultivars of peas, snap beans, and faba beans. Plants grew in greenhouses either at ambient (ACO , 392 μmol mol ) or under elevated (ECO , 700 μmol mol ) CO levels. Minerals, proteins, sugars, and phenolic compounds were measured in grains of peas and faba beans, and in pods of snap beans.

Results: The effect of ECO depended on legume species, being more evident for food quality than for vegetative growth and yield. The ECO increased Fe and P in faba bean grains, and Ca in snap bean pods. Under ECO , grains of pea and faba bean increased levels of proteins and phenolics, respectively, and the sugars-to-protein ratio decreased in pods of snap beans.

Conclusion: Early maturing varieties of legumes appear to be an interesting tool to cope with the negative effects that a long exposure to rising CO can exert on food quality. © 2021 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.