Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding
Legumes like chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut are
protein rich, nutrient-dense, and nitrogen fixing crops.
Their importance is increasingly recognized in view of the
urgent need to address burgeoning malnutrition problem
and to impart sustainability to cropping systems. Breeding
programs in these crops have achieved great success.
However, consistent improvement in genetic gains
demands integration of innovative tools and technologies
with crop breeding programs. Genomic resources are of
paramount significance in context of improving the
efficiency and precision of crop breeding schemes. The
last decade has witnessed a remarkable success in
generating unprecedented genomic resources in these
crops, thus transforming these genomic orphans into
genomic resource rich crops. These genomic resources
include array-based genotyping platforms, high-resolution
genetic linkage maps/HapMaps, comprehensive
transcriptome assemblies and gene expression atlas, and
whole genome sequences etc. Further progression from
the training phase (development) to breeding (deployment)
phase is marked with the current availability of a variety of
molecular breeding products in these legume crops. In the
present review, we discuss how deployment of the modern
genomic resources such as next-generation gene discovery
techniques and “gold standard experimental designs” is
furthering our knowledge about the genetic underpinnings
of trait variation. Also, key success stories demonstrating
the power of molecular breeding in these legume crops are
highlighted. It is opined that the breeding populations
constantly improved by sequence-based breeding approach
will greatly help improving breeding traits and the genetic
gains accruable from crop breeding programs.
Keywords: Legume, DNA markers, gene, genome, trait mapping
Year: 2019
Volume: 79
Issue: 1, Supplement
Article DOI: 10.31742/IJGPB.79S.1.13
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906
Abhishek Bohra, Chellapilla Bharadwaj, T. Radhakrishnan, Narendra P. Singh and Rajeev K. Varshney* info_circle
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