Exploring Chickpea Germplasm Diversity for Broadening the Genetic Base Utilizing Genomic Resourses

Abstract

Legume crops provide significant nutrition to humans as a source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids as well as specific macro and micronutrients. Additionally, legumes improve the cropping environment by replenishing the soil nitrogen content. Chickpeas are the second most significant staple legume food crop worldwide behind dry bean which contains 17%–24% protein, 41%–51% carbohydrate, and other important essential minerals, vitamins, dietary fiber, folate, β-carotene, anti-oxidants, micronutrients (phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc) as well as linoleic and oleic unsaturated fatty acids. Despite these advantages, legumes are far behind cereals in terms of genetic improvement mainly due to far less effort, the bottlenecks of the narrow genetic base, and several biotic and abiotic factors in the scenario of changing climatic conditions. Measures are now called for beyond conventional breeding practices to strategically broadening of narrow genetic base utilizing chickpea wild relatives and improvement of cultivars through advanced breeding approaches with a focus on high yield productivity, biotic and abiotic stresses including climate resilience, and enhanced nutritional values. Desirable donors having such multiple traits have been identified using core and mini core collections from the cultivated gene pool and wild relatives of Chickpea. Several methods have been developed to address cross-species fertilization obstacles and to aid in inter-specific hybridization and introgression of the target gene sequences from wild Cicer species. Additionally, recent advances in “Omics” sciences along with high-throughput and precise phenotyping tools have made it easier to identify genes that regulate traits of interest. Next-generation sequencing technologies, whole-genome sequencing, transcriptomics, and differential genes expression profiling along with a plethora of novel techniques like single nucleotide polymorphism exploiting high-density genotyping by sequencing assays, simple sequence repeat markers, diversity array technology platform, and whole-genome re-sequencing technique led to the identification and development of QTLs and high-density trait mapping of the global chickpea germplasm. These altogether have helped in broadening the narrow genetic base of chickpeas.

Prospects of microgreens as budding living functional food: Breeding and biofortification through OMICS and other approaches for nutritional security

“…However, the high-resolution physical maps serve as the scaffold for genome sequence assembly to identify the most accurate distance between the markers and the genes linked in addition to exploring of the potential candidate gene(s) linked to desired traits. The trait mapping through sequencing approaches may be categorized into two classes i) Sequencing of complete populations for trait mapping and ii) Sequencing of pooled samples for trait mapping ( Singh et al, 2022 ). Researchers have great interest in its genomic properties, which provides a valuable marker for crop improvement.…”

“…Prospective OMICS approaches have been investigated in many plants to improve the desirable traits and elucidated earlier ( AieseCigliano et al, 2022 ; Chakravorty et al, 2022 ; Dutta et al, 2022 ; Gupta, 2022 ; Gupta and Tyagi, 2022 ; Parmar et al, 2022 ; Sharma and Gupta, 2022 ; Singh et al, 2022 ). Re-sequencing activities of whole-genome employing genetic diversity, domestication patterns, evolutionary analysis, population structure, and linkage disequilibrium for chickpea improvement as a result of the technical advancements that upgraded chickpea (an orphan crop) to a potential geneticcrop ( Varshney et al, 2019 ).…”

Mining legume germplasm for genetic gains: An Indian perspective

“…Finally, Singh (1997) has listed several of the important sources identified at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and at the ICRISAT. Various important sources of biotic stress resistance are listed by Singh et al (2022) and are also presented in Table 4 and Figure 4 .…”

Assessment of Genetic Diversity among Quantitative Traits of Chickpea Genotypes

“…In addition, it's essential for economic attributes in the germplasm for better utilisation after hybridization, selection or breeding methods. To overcome the genetic bottlenecks and create superior gene pools, broadening the genetic base through pre-breeding is required to enhance the utility of germplasm [4]. Genetic diversity is crucial for a germplasm collection as it primarily assists to plant breeders to maintain superior hybrids/crossbred varieties and various genes that could lead to resistance to pests, diseases, or other stress conditions [5].…”