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Vicia is a genus of over 240 species of that are part of the legume family (Fabaceae), and which are commonly known as vetches. Vicia species are native to Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas.
The vetch is also referenced by Horace in his account of "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" as . Satires II.6, 117 This is said to be a source of comfort for the country mouse after a disturbing insight into urban life. They are mentioned in William Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas / Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease;"
Vicia species are used as food plants by the of some butterflies and , such as:
Most other parasitism and affecting vetches have been recorded on the broad bean, the most widely cultivated and economically significant species. They include the mite Balaustium vignae whose adults are found on broad bean, the Alternanthera mosaic virus, clover yellow mosaic virus and white clover mosaic virus, and several other virus species such as Bidens mosaic virus, tobacco streak virus, Vicia cryptic virus and Vicia faba endornavirus.
Cystathionine, an intermediary product of this biochemical pathway, is secreted in urine. This process can effectively lead to the depletion of vital protective reserves of the sulfur amino acid cysteine and thereby making Vicia sativa seed a dangerous component in mixture with other toxin sources. The Spain pulse mix comuña contains common vetch and bitter vetch in addition to vetchling ( Lathyrus cicera) seeds; it can be fed in small quantities to ruminants, but its use as a staple food will cause lathyrism even in these animals. Moreover, common vetch as well as broad bean – and probably other species of Vicia too – contain like convicine, isouramil, divicine and vicine in quantities sufficient to lower glutathione levels in G6PD-deficient persons to cause favism disease. At least broad beans also contain the lectin phytohemagglutinin and are somewhat poisonous if eaten raw. Split common vetch seeds resemble split ( Vicia lens), and has been occasionally mislabelled as such by exporters or importers to be sold for human consumption. In some countries where lentils are highly popular – e.g., Bangladesh, Egypt, India and Pakistan – import bans on suspect produce have been established to prevent these potentially harmful scams.
Bernard of Clairvaux shared a bread-of-vetch meal with his monks during the famine of 1124 to 1126, as an emblem of humility. However, the bitter vetch largely was dropped from human use over time. It was only used to save as a crop of last resort in times of starvation: vetches "featured in the frugal diet of the poor until the eighteenth century, and even reappeared on the black market in the South of France during the Second World War", Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, of Marseillais background, has remarked. (2025). 9781405181198, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405181198 However, broad beans remained prominent. In the Near East the seeds are mentioned in Hittites and sources dating from more than 3,000 years ago as well as in the Christian Bible, and in the large Celts Oppidum of Manching from the La Tène culture in Europe some 2,200 years ago. Dishes resembling ful medames are attested in the Jerusalem Talmud which was compiled before 400 AD.
In our time, the common vetch ( Vicia sativa) has also risen to prominence. Together with broad bean such as horse bean or field bean, the FAO includes it among the 11 most important pulses in the world. The main usage of the common vetch is as forage for ruminant animals, both as fodder and legume, but there are other uses, as tufted vetch Vicia cracca is grown as a mid-summer pollen source for .
In 2017, global production of vetches was 920,537 tonnes.Citation error. See inline comment how to fix. That year, 560,077 acres were devoted to the cultivation of vetches in the world. Over 54% of that output came from Europe alone. Africa (17.8% of world total), Asia (15.6% of world total), Americas (10.6% of world total) and Oceania (1.8% of world total). [14]
The bitter vetch, too, is grown extensively for forage and fodder, as are hairy vetch ( Vicia villosa, also called fodder vetch), bard vetch ( Vicia articulata), French vetch ( V. serratifolia) and Narbon bean ( V. narbonensis). V. benghalensis and Hungarian vetch ( Vicia pannonica) are cultivated for forage and green manure.
The vetches also have a broad variety of other purposes. The Hairy Vetch has well-established uses as a green manure and as an allelopathic cover crop. As regards the broad bean, it is known to accumulate aluminum in its tissue; in polluted soils it may be useful in phytoremediation, but with one per mil of aluminum in the dry plant (possibly more in the seeds), it might not be edible anymore. The robust plants are useful as a beetle bank to provide habitat and shelter for carnivorous and other to keep down pest invertebrates. When the of broad bean are inoculated with the rhodospirillacean bacterium Azospirillum brasilense and the glomeracean fungus Glomus clarum, the species can also be productively grown in Soil salinity. In the 1980s, the auxin 4-Cl-IAA was studied in Vicia amurensis and the broad bean, and since 1990, the antibacterial Gamma thionin fabatin-1 and -2 have been isolated from the latter species.
Despite a small karyotype of n=6, the broad bean has a high DNA content, making it easy for a micronucleus test of its root tips to recognize genotoxic compounds. A lectin from Vicia graminea is used to test for the medically significant N blood group.
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