Food legumes are important for defeating malnutrition and sustaining agri-food systems globally. Breeding efforts in legume crops have been largely confined to the exploitation of genetic variation available within the primary genepool, resulting in narrow genetic base. Introgression as a breeding scheme has been remarkably successful for an array of inheritance and molecular studies in food legumes. Crop wild relatives (CWRs), landraces, and exotic germplasm offer great potential for introgression of novel variation not only to widen the genetic base of the elite genepool for continuous incremental gains over breeding cycles but also to discover the cryptic genetic variation hitherto unexpressed. CWRs also harbor positive quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for improving agronomic traits. However, for transferring polygenic traits, “specialized population concept” has been advocated for transferring QTLs from CWR into elite backgrounds. Recently, introgression breeding has been successful in developing improved cultivars in chickpea (Cicer arietinum), pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), lentil (Lens culinaris), mungbean (Vigna radiata), urdbean (Vigna mungo), and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Successful examples indicated that the usable genetic variation could be exploited by unleashing new gene recombination and hidden variability even in late filial generations. In mungbean alone, distant hybridization has been deployed to develop seven improved commercial cultivars, whereas in urdbean, three such cultivars have been reported. Similarly, in chickpea, three superior cultivars have been developed from crosses between C. arietinum and Cicer reticulatum. Pigeonpea has benefited the most where different cytoplasmic male sterility genes have been transferred from CWRs, whereas a number of disease-resistant germplasm have also been developed in Phaseolus. As vertical gene transfer has resulted in most of the useful gene introgressions of practical importance in food legumes, the horizontal gene transfer through transgenic technology, somatic hybridization, and, more recently, intragenesis also offer promise. The gains through introgression breeding are significant and underline the need of bringing it in the purview of mainstream breeding while deploying tools and techniques to increase the recombination rate in wide crosses and reduce the linkage drag. The resurgence of interest in introgression breeding needs to be capitalized for development of commercial food legume cultivars.

豆类食品对于战胜全球营养不良和维持农业食品系统至关重要。豆类作物的育种工作主要限于利用原始基因库中可用的遗传变异，导致遗传基础狭窄。渗入作为育种方案已经成功地用于食品豆类的一系列遗传和分子研究。作物野生近缘种（CWR），地方品种和外来种质为新变异的渗入提供了巨大潜力，不仅可以拓宽精英基因库的遗传基础，从而在繁殖周期内不断增加收益，而且还可以发现迄今尚未表达的隐秘遗传变异。CWR还具有积极的数量性状基因座（QTL），用于改善农艺性状。但是，为了转移多基因性状，提倡“特殊人群概念”以将QTL从CWR转移到精英背景中。最近，渗入育种已成功地开发了鹰嘴豆改良品种（鹰嘴豆）， 木豆 （Cajanus cajan），花生（花生），扁豆（晶状体）， 绿豆 （豆），urdbean（gna豆）和普通豆（菜豆）。成功的例子表明，即使在子代后代，也可以通过释放新的基因重组和隐藏的变异性来利用可用的遗传变异。仅在绿豆中，已采用远距离杂交来开发七个改良的商业品种，而在乌豆中，已报道了三个这样的品种。同样，在鹰嘴豆中，通过杂交产生了三个优良品种棉铃虫 和 网纹柑橘。当从CWR中转移了不同的细胞质雄性不育基因时，木豆受益最大，而在墨西哥已经开发了许多抗病种质菜豆。由于垂直基因转移已导致在豆类食品中具有实际重要性的大多数有用基因渗入，通过转基因技术，体细胞杂交以及最近的内部遗传学进行水平基因转移也提供了希望。通过渗入育种获得的收益是可观的，并强调了将其纳入主流育种范围的需要，同时需要部署工具和技术以提高宽杂交的重组率并减少连锁阻力。对渗入育种兴趣的重新兴起需要被资本化以发展商业性食品豆类品种。