BioProject

Medicago ruthenica (L.) Ledebour belonging to the section of Platycarpae, is an allogamous diploid (2n=2x=16) perennial legume forage species (Small and Jomphe 1989; Lesins and Lesins 1979). More...

Medicago ruthenica (L.) Ledebour belonging to the section of Platycarpae, is an allogamous diploid (2n=2x=16) perennial legume forage species (Small and Jomphe 1989; Lesins and Lesins 1979). It is widely distributed in Siberia, Mongolia, Manchuria and north China (Gen et al. 1995; Hao and Shi 2006; Shi 2006; Small and Jomphe 1989), and is adapted to harsh environment with extremely low snowfall and very cold winters (Balabaev 1934). A recent report showed that Medicago ruthenica is the only forage legume of Genus Medicago that can grow in Tibet plateau alpine meadow and steppe (Jin et al. 2013). Our investigation also found that Medicago ruthenica has more capable of overwintering in extremely cold alpine grassland on Qinghai-Tibet plateau than Medicago falcate which exhibits greater cold tolerance than Medicago sativa (Unpublished data). Because of its remarkable ability to survive mechanical and physical stresses, superior soil nutrient-using efficiency, Medicago ruthenica has been recognized as a promising new forage crops for low input agricultural system or as a genetic resource for cultivated alfalfa improvement program (Balabaev 1934; Campbell et al. 1999; Campbell and Bauchan 2002; Small and Jomphe 1989). A domesticated cultivar of Medicago ruthenica has been registered and released in China (Wu et al. 1993), and an attempt to introduce the trait of cold tolerance into cultivated alfalfa by hybridization was also carried out (WANG et al. 2008) although the chances of hybridizations between alfalfa and Medicago ruthenica appear to be problematic (Campbell and Bauchan 2002). Up to date, besides the domestication, agronomic evaluation, physiological assessment of abiotic tolerance and analysis of genetic diversity, very rare molecular characterizations of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in Medicago ruthenica have been performed. The lack of genomic and transcriptomic sequence information limits molecular investigation of its adaptations to cold stress. Less...