Product Code Database
Vicia sativa, known as the common vetch, garden vetch, tare or simply vetch, is a nitrogen-fixing legume plant in the family Fabaceae. It is now naturalised throughout the world occurring on every continent, except Antarctica and the Arctic.Ian C. Murfet and Kristin L. Groom. "Vicia Sativa Aggregate." Handbook of Flowering, Volume VI. Abraham Halevy, ed. CRC Press, 2019. Page . The centre of diversity is thought to be the Fertile Crescent, although gold standard molecular confirmation is currently not available.
Global common vetch cultivation is limited due to anti-nutritional compounds in the seed although it is grown in dryland agricultural zones in Australia, China and Ethiopia due to its drought tolerance and very low nutrient requirements compared to other legumes. In these agricultural zones common vetch is grown as a green manure, livestock fodder or Crop rotation In cultivated grainfields, like Lentil, it is often considered a weed due to downgrading of harvested mixed grain, resulting in farmers receiving less financial returns.
The leaves are stipule, alternate and compound, each made up of 3–8 opposite pairs of linear, lance-shaped, oblong, or wedge-shaped, needle-tipped leaflets up to long. Each compound leaf ends in a branched tendril.
The pea-like flowers occur in the leaf axils, solitary or in pairs. The flower corolla is long and bright pink-purple in colour, more rarely whitish or yellow. The flowers are mostly visited by .
The fruit is a legume pod up to long, which is hairy when new, smooth later, then brown or black when ripe. It contains 4–12 seeds. (2025). 9781408179505, A & C Black. ISBN 9781408179505
After the seed is sown and the land carefully harrowed, a light roller ought to be drawn across, to smooth the surface and permit the scythe to work without interruption. Also, the field should be watched for several days to prevent from eating too much of the sown seed.
thrive very well on common vetch, even better than on clover and rye grass; the same applies to fattening cattle, which feed faster on vetch than on most Poaceae or other edible plants. Danger often arises from livestock eating too much vetch, especially when podded; and other stomach disorders are apt to be produced by the excessive amounts devoured.
Cereal grains can be sown with vetch so it can use their stronger stems for support, attaching via . When grown with or other , the vetch can grow upright; otherwise its weak stems may sprawl along the ground. Several are available for agricultural use, and as for some other legume crops, rhizobia can be added to the seed.
Pests that attack this crop include the powdery mildew fungus Erysiphe pisi, the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, the Helicoverpa zea ( Heliothis zea), the fall armyworm ( Spodoptera frugiperda), and of genus Tetranychus.
During the early 20th century, a mutant of the common vetch arose with lens-shaped seeds resembling those of the lentil, leading to vetch invasions of lentil fields. D. G. Rowlands showed in 1959 that this was due to a single recessive mutation. The transition from traditional winnowing to mechanised farming practices largely solved this problem.
Improved varieties of Vicia sativa developed by the National Vetch Breeding Program for Australia include; Timok, Volga, Rasina and more recently Studenica. These varieties are mostly cultivated in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. More than per year of Vicia sativa was grown in Australia in 2019.
Although V. sativa is sometimes known as tare, the "tare" referred to in some English translations of the Bible (as in the "Parable of the Tares") is thought to be darnel ryegrass, Lolium temulentum. (2025). 9780901158420, Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. ISBN 9780901158420
There are at least four generally accepted subspecies:
A high-quality chromosome level genome assembly was published in 2022 of variety Studencia (n=6), following a draft genome assembly of line KSR5 (n=7). Variety Studencia, is predicted to have 53,318 protein coding genes. Whole genome sequence comparisons showed that Vicia sativa is most closely related to pea.
A high-quality genome sequence facilitates the application of genome editing and genomic selection for healthy, higher yielding varieties.
|
|
