Towards Pigeonpea Improvement Using Genomics and Molecular Breeding

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), the sixth most important legume food crop, plays an important role for food security and income generation for poor in developing countries of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Because of exposure of the crop with several biotic (Fusarium wilt, sterility mosaic disease) and abiotic (water logging, salinity) stresses, the crop productivity is very low. With an objective of closing this yield gap through genomics-assisted breeding approaches, USAID project entitled “Pigeonpea Improvement Through Molecular Breeding”, plans to develop and utilize specialized geentic resources with genome sequence to harness the potential of genomics and genetic diversity in crop improvement. Genetic diversity present in elite gene pool is being utilized by linkage mapping and nested association mapping (NAM) approaches for trait mapping. Multi-parents advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) population and introgression libraries (ILs) are being developed to generate genetic resources with enhanced genetic diversity after bringing the superior alleles from landraces and wild species, respectively. Similarly, superior alleles for traits of interest to the breeders, present in unadapted germplasm (e.g. reference set), are being identified through genome-wide association study (GWAS) approach. Genetic material, available at present and being developed, will be used for multi-location phenotyping for traits of interest to breeders and will be used for high-density genotyping (e.g. GBS). Detailed analysis of these large-scale data should provide useful information on marker(s)/ gene(s)/ haplotype(s)- trait association as well as the superior lines for target traits as well as with enhnaced genetic diversity that can be used in future molecular breeding programmes.