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Book of Abstracts First Legume Society Conference 2013: A Legume Odyssey Novi Sad, Serbia, 9-11 May 2013
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Development of genomic resources for improvement of food legumes
N Nadarajan 1 , Sanjeev Gupta 1 , Shiv Kumar 2 , Ashutosh Sarkar 3
1 Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, India
2 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, Morocco
3 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, New Delhi, India
Among food legumes, chickpea, pigeon pea, lentil, peas, mungbean and common bean are
assuming significance in terms of production at global level. Efforts have been made to develop
genomic resources for improvement of these food legumes for their effective use in marker
assisted breeding for important traits. Different types of molecular markers such as RFLPs,
AFLPs, SSRs, CAPS, RGAs and ESTs have been developed for identification and mapping of
genes and QTLs for many agriculturally important traits and occasionally for germplasm
screening, fingerprinting, and marker-assisted breeding. A large number of microsatellites which
are known to be abundant and uniformly distributed in the chickpea genome have been used to
develop a genotyping kit, analyze genetic relationships among Cicer species and assess levels of
cross-transferability. Further, these markers have also been applied for the construction of
intraspecific and interspecific genetic linkage maps and for mapping genes of agronomic
importance such as disease resistance and yield related traits, thereby demonstrating that SSRs are
ideal tools for chickpea. Additionally, in chickpea only about 800 STMS markers have also been
reported and only 30-40% is expected to be polymorphic. Similar has been the case for the ESTs,
however, at present about 30,000 ESTs are available in public domain which can be used in
chickpea improvement. The genome sequence of pigeon pea developed by two separate groups
in recent has provided sufficient number of practical markers for improvement of this crop.
Total 47,004 protein coding genes and 12,511 transposable elements related genes were
postulated by one group while other group predicted 48,680 genes on 11 chromosomes of pigeon
pea. At least 25 mapping populations of pigeon pea for a number of biotic and abiotic stresses
are being currently developed. In terms of genomic resources, lentil is relatively under developed
with limited available data. At present lentil specific 9,513 EST sequences are available in the
public domain. There is consequently a pressing need for significant efforts to either develop
markers capable of cross-species transfer, in order to enrich existing genetic maps, or generate
more informative species-specific genetic and genomic tools which can enable the identification
of orthologous genes through genome synteny analysis in lentils. Comparatively, genomic
resources for common bean are mostly available. Eleven BAC libraries and 83,000 ESTs and
over 25 linkage maps, mostly low density (markers on average every 10 cM), have been developed
for common bean. To maximize molecular polymorphism, the majority of mapping populations
were derived from crosses between domesticated parents belonging to the Andean vs. Middle
American gene pools. The development of genomic resources in Mungbean has been
comparatively slow as only eight linkage maps are available and gene for bruchids tolerance and
powdery mildew were mapped on chromosomes. Relatively very few markers are available in
public domain, however, markers from other Vigna species like azukibean and blackgram showed
polymorphism for Mungbean germplasm. This paper describes the current status of availability
of genomic resources and focused the need of development of more practical markers for
genomic enabled improvement in food legumes.
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