Lentil Genomics: Walking on the Wild Side

Improved lentil (Lens culinaris L.) cultivars with greater productivity, enhanced quality traits and resistance to multiple diseases are becoming increasingly important to maintain the expansion of production to meet global demands.  Heavy use of a small number of parents for cultivar development and specific quality requirements can lead to lack of genetic diversity for stress tolerance and other economically important traits. Using wild species from accessible gene pools is one method that has been used successfully for broadening the genetic base of cultivated breeding programs.  The use of a wider gene pool, however, comes with a potential cost due to the co-introgression of negative traits along with the positive ones, the so called ‘linkage drag’ phenomenon.  We are developing genomic tools to facilitate the understanding of relationships between cultivated lentil and its wild relatives and patterns of introgression in interspecific hybrids between them.  By integrating newly available and emerging genomics tools with traditional breeding approaches, we will be better able to make strategic use of a broader array of germplasm in the breeding program.