Introgression from wild Cicer reticulatum to cultivated chickpea for productivity and disease resistance

Abstract

Interspecific hybridization is known to improve productivity and resistance to diseases in many crops. Therefore, an attempt was made to introgress productivity and disease resistance into chickpea from wild Cicer species. The true F 1 hybrids of cultivated chickpea genotypes ÔL550Õ and ÔFGK45Õ with C. reticulatum were backcrossed twice to their cultivated female parents to minimize the linkage drag of undesirable wild traits. The pedigree method was followed to advance the segregating populations from straight crosses (without backcross) and BC 1 /BC 2 generations to F 5 -F 7 . The interspecific derivatives recorded up to a 16.9% increase over the check cultivars and a 25.2% increase over the female parent in a preliminary yield evaluation trial. Of the 22 interspecific derivatives thus derived, four desi and two kabuli lines were further evaluated for seed yield in replicated trials at three diverse locations. These lines possess a high degree of resistance to wilt, foot rot and root rot diseases, and recorded a 6.1-17.0% seed yield increase over the best check cultivars.

Pre-breeding for diversification of primary gene pool and genetic enhancement of grain legumes

“…Utilization of C. reticulatum accession, ILWC 119 in crossing programme has resulted in the development of two cyst nematode resistant chickpea germplasm lines ILC 10765 and ILC 10766 (Malhotra et al, 2002). Beneficial traits such as cold tolerance and a high degree of resistance to wilt, foot rot, root rot, and Botrytis gray mold have also been introgressed from C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum into cultivated chickpea (ICARDA, 1995; Singh et al, 2005; Ramgopal et al, 2012). Using novel techniques, interspecific hybrids have been produced between C. arietinum × C. judaicum (Verma et al, 1990; Verma and RaviSandhu, 1995; Singh et al, 1999), C. arietinum × C. pinnatifidum (Verma et al, 1990; Badami et al, 1997; Mallikarjuna, 1999; Mallikarjuna and Jadhav, 2008), C. arietinum × C. cuneatum (Singh and Singh, 1989), and C. arietinum × C. bijugum (Verma et al, 1990; Singh et al, 1999; Mallikarjuna et al, 2007) to introgress desirable alien genes from these cross-incompatible wild Cicer species into cultivated chickpea.…”

“…ciceris ) (Yadav et al, 2004). Interspecific derivatives possessing a high degree of resistance to diseases such as wilt, root rot and foot rot, and high yield, have been obtained from C. arietinum × C. reticulatum crosses (Singh et al, 2005). In ICRISAT, using two C. reticulatum accessions (110–113 days to 50% flowering, 143–150 days to maturity, 12–16 g 100-seed weight) in a hybridization program, several progenies were selected which took 8–21 days less to flower, 6–33 days less to mature, with 20–103% larger seeds, and 97–217% greater seed yield than respective cultivated ( C. arietinum ) parent (Upadhyaya, 2008).…”

Embryo rescue and plant regeneration in vitro of selfed chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and its wild annual relatives

“…Cyst nematode resistance was successfully introgressed from C. reticulatum (Singh et al, 1996;Malhotra et al, 2002) and root lesion nematode resistance and phytophthora resistance from C. echinospermum (Knights et al, 2002). More recently, a range of genes for disease resistance and superior productivity was introgressed into chickpea from C. reticulatum (Singh et al, 2005). The major constraint to full utilisation of the other wild relatives is the incompatability between chickpea and the remaining 40 known species of Cicer which fall into the secondary and tertiary genepools.…”

Legume Crops Phylogeny and Genetic Diversity for Science and Breeding

“…Successful hybridizations between the cultivated chickpea and C. reticulatum or C. echinospermum and their reciprocals have been reported (Ladizinsky and Adler, 1976ab;Jaiswal and Singh, 1986;Singh and Ocampo, 1993;Croser et al, 2003;Ahmad and Slinkard, 2004;Singh et al, 2005;Clarke et al, 2006;Knights et al, 2008;Malikarjuna et al, 2011;Thompson et al, 2012). Although some of the accessions of C. bijugum, C. judaicum and C. pinnatifidum used as pollen donors were crossed with the cultivated chickpea, hybrids were available via embryo rescue techniques (Ahmad and Slinkard, 2004).…”