A meta‐analysis of quantitative trait loci (QTLs), associated with agronomic traits, fertility restoration, disease resistance, and seed quality traits was conducted for the first time in pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.). Data on 498 QTLs was collected from 9 linkage mapping studies (involving 21 biparental populations). Of these 498, 203 QTLs were projected onto “PigeonPea_ConsensusMap_2022,” saturated with 10,522 markers, which resulted in the prediction of 34 meta‐QTLs (MQTLs). The average confidence interval (CI) of these MQTLs (2.54 cM) was 3.37 times lower than the CI of the initial QTLs (8.56 cM). Of the 34 MQTLs, 12 high‐confidence MQTLs with CI (≤5 cM) and a greater number of initial QTLs (≥5) were utilized to extract 2255 gene models, of which 105 were believed to be associated with different traits under study. Furthermore, eight of these MQTLs were observed to overlap with several marker‐trait associations or significant SNPs identified in previous genome‐wide association studies. Furthermore, synteny and ortho‐MQTL analyses among pigeonpea and four related legumes crops, such as chickpea, pea, cowpea, and French bean, led to the identification of 117 orthologous genes from 20 MQTL regions. Markers associated with MQTLs can be employed for MQTL‐assisted breeding as well as to improve the prediction accuracy of genomic selection in pigeonpea. Additionally, MQTLs may be subjected to fine mapping, and some of the promising candidate genes may serve as potential targets for positional cloning and functional analysis to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the target traits.

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In India, oat is grown as fodder crop during Rabi season in north-western and central parts of the country and is now even extending to eastern region as well. The only commercially cultivated species in the genus Avena are Avena sativa, Avena nuda and Avena byzantine. Oat flowers are bit delicate when compared to other cereal floral structure and seed set is influenced by many factors during artificial hybridisation. This paper includes about floral biology of oat crop and also the various factors responsible for seed set during hybridisation viz effect of Interval Between Emasculation and Pollination, effect of temperature for seed set and any Injury to floral Parts during hybridisation.

Staygreen is one such trait in which genotypes possessing this trait maintain more photo synthetically active leaves (& less senescent) than genotypes not possessing this trait. Delay of leaf senescence also known as stay-green character, has been identified as an important component in the genetic improvement of several crops to promote stress tolerance and yield gain. Although the stay-green phenotype is superficially similar in all species and genotypes, the genetic and physiological routes the traits are diverse. Photosynthetically active leaves for longer period depends on the concentration of chlorophyll pigment absorbing sunlight for photosynthesis. An multi dimensional approach for studying the senescence pathway rather than studying only the physiological role made a significant role in improvement. Hence new approaches like genomics, proteomics and metabolomics studies are necessary to understand the various transcription factors involved in regulating the leaf senescence process. Therefore, this review has aimed to bring light to major aspects of the stay-green character, showing its potential use in plant breeding.

Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) is a technique used to identify genetic markers associated with a mutant phenotype and is a quick method for identifying markers in particular genome regions. The paper focussed on Advanced methods which escape the requirement of genotyping all the individuals of the mapping population and generation of high-density linkage maps for mapping of the gene for the trait of interest. With the emergence of re-sequencing techniques, quick mapping of genes has become possible with reduced time and cost by using advanced methodologies like MutMap, MutMap+, MutMap-Gap, QTL-Seq, RNAseq BSA, NGS BSA and QTG seq. The procedure for various advanced BSA strategies has been described.