HYDERABAD: In a major breakthrough in crop research, an international team of researchers led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has assembled chickpea’s pan-genome by sequencing the genomes of 3,366 chickpea lines from 60 countries.
The study, which has placed chickpea among a small group of crops with such an extensive genome map, was published in Nature on November 10. The study points to the cultivated chickpea species scientifically called Cicer arietinum, diverging from its wild progenitor species, Cicer reticulatum, around 12,600 years ago.
“By employing the whole genome sequencing, we have been able to affirm the history of chickpea’s origin in the Fertile Crescent and migration of chickpea to South Asia and East Africa, to the Mediterranean region (probably through Turkey) as well as to the Black Sea and Central Asia (up to Afghanistan),” said Prof Rajeev Varshney, a Research Program Director at ICRISAT.
Comparison of the genetic variation in cultivated chickpea with that of it’s wild progenitor helped the researchers identify deleterious genes responsible for lowering crop performance. “Genomic resources are crucial for accelerating crop improvement programmes,” said Dr Arvind Kumar, Deputy Director General-Research, ICRISAT.
The new genomic breeding approaches suggested by the study are expected to redefine chickpea breeding strategies for developing high-yielding chickpea varieties to deliver more produce and better income for small farmers in India and elsewhere.