Rice Bean—An Underutilized Food Crop Emerges as Cornucopia of Micronutrients Essential for Sustainable Food and Nutritional Security

Food and nutritional security in the face of global climatic changes and population spike poses challenges to the scientific community. Rice bean (Vigna umbellata) is a neglected, underutilized food, feed and pharmaceutically important nutrient-dense crop and is adapted to grow in diverse agricultural lands. Moreover, it is resistant to umpteen biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought, aluminium toxicity, and numerous diseases. Despite having nutritional importance still this crop is categorized as underutilized due to insufficient awareness of its nutritional potential and extensive research. This situation can be expected to be tapped via bringing rice bean into the mainstream of research employing genome editing and molecular breeding approaches. The Nutritional Improvement of Crops group at ICGEB has spearheaded whole genome sequencing (WGS) and transcriptome analyses for the rice bean to accomplish the trait improvement. This chapter has highlighted the origin, domestication, and diversification of rice bean germplasm. We also shed light on the nutritional potential and significant sustainable strategies to improve the germplasm of rice bean to alleviate the global malnutrition problem.