Chickpea genetic resources and its utilization in India: Current status and future prospects

Abstract

Chickpea is recognized as most nutritious pulse crop and with respect to acreage, it ranks at the top among pulses in India. Realizing the significance of plant genetic resources, special efforts were made by the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) to collect the chickpea germplasm from different states of India including certain useful introductions from other countries. A large number of germplasm accessions including wild species were characterized and evaluated for various agro-morphological traits using chickpea minimal descriptor.Thus, extensive germplasm collections now exist in various gene banks of the world including India. As far as germplasm maintenance is concerned, a core set developed by ICRISAT comprising of 1956 accessions and mini core set of 211 accessions representing diversity for seed yield and its component traits. Further, core set developed by NBPGR consisting of 1103 accessions extracted from 14651 accessions conserved in the Indian National Gene Bank revealed that 70% of materials belong to Indian origin. The characterization and evaluation experiments of chickpea conducted across the country led to the registration of some unique germplasm accessions for different trait of interest. However, using crop wild relatives, several interspecific crosses and advance pre-breeding lines were developed by the pulse research institutions in India. The trait of interest incorporated especially from C. reticulatum, C. echinospermum and C. judaicum species for widening the genetic base of cultivated gene pool. Some pre-breeding lines have been suggested as useful donors in national chickpea crossing programmes.

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) and its wild spp. germplasm collection status, diversity distribution and trait-specific germplasm mapping using GIS tools in India

“…Jalna, Akola, Maharashtra (2) IC73321, IC552858 Ambikapur, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh (2) *Compiled from several sources like (Annual reports NBPGR, 1976Singh et al, 2013;Dua et al, 2007) Remanandan, 1990). Variability in these and other parameters of the pigeonpea collections from India has been reported by others (Singh et al 2014). Perennial forms are collected from hilly tracts of peninsular and north eastern India, while vegetable types (use of immature pod) from north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura.…”

“…A total of 107 traitspecific germplasm have been grid-mapped for eight economically important traits-short plant height, high pod bearing length, high pod number, long pod, bold seed, high shelling percent, high yield and protein content (Singh et al 2014). Promising accessions identified for these traits by the Bureau (Annual reports NBPGR, 1976NBPGR, -2014Dua et al 2007) along with their source areas are given in table 2.…”

Pigeonpea improvement: An amalgam of breeding and genomic research

“…Pigeonpea germplasm resource comprises of 13,771 accessions deposited at the ICRISAT genebank, India (Gowda, Upadhyaya, Sharma, Varshney, & Dwivedi, ; Pazhamala et al., ), 11,221 accessions collected at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), India (Pazhamala et al., ; Singh et al., ), 4,116 accessions at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), USA, 1,288 accessions at Kenya Agricultural Research Institute's National Genebank of Kenya (KARI‐NGBK), Kenya (Singh, Tyagi, & Pandey, ; Pazhamala et al.,) and 433 accessions at National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory, Philippines (Upadhyaya et al.,).…”

The Pigeonpea Genome: An Overview

“…The International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) holds 13,771 pigeonpea accessions (Gowda et al 2013). About 11,221 accessions are deposited at the India National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) (Singh et al 2014). Pigeonpea accessions are also deposited elsewhere including 4116 accessions at US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and 1288 accessions at National Genebank of Kenya .…”