Nutrient profiling of Lablab bean [(Lablab purpureus L.) Sweet] accessions from Northeast India: Diversity exploration leading to mitigation of nutritional vulnerability

Abstract Lablab purpureus, one of the most significant yet neglected and underutilized legume vegetable crops, has tremendous genetic variability in its traits, including growth habit, stem pigmentation, and pod color. Retrospectively, L. purpureus's systematic crop improvement efforts received less attention from researchers. In the current study, 11 local accessions of L. purpureus that were collected from various locations in Arunachal Pradesh-a global biodiversity hotspot, and their morphological and biochemical characteristics were examined. The conventional procedure for analyzing nutritional and anti-nutritional components found considerable variations for each of the characters under the study. The length, width, and pod color differed significantly across the eleven genotypes examined in the study. All accessions had good nutritional content and very low anti-nutritional elements, particularly the phytic acid was extremely low (1.77–2.43 mg/100gm) in the tender pod when compared to the lablab accessions of south Indian states as well as of common leguminous vegetables. The low phytate content assumes significance for enhanced mineral bioavailability, making its immature pods the potential functional food, thus, carving the pathways for mitigating the nutritional vulnerability in developing countries. These local accessions of lablab also represent an agronomically and nutritionally important pool for L. purpureus improvement/breeding.