BENGALURU: A collaborative Indo-Swiss ragi genome sequencing project aims to help improve the nutrition value of ragi and thereby help farmers gain better economic benefit from the crop.
The project is being steered by the Technical University of Switzerland, Zurich; Department of Crop Physiology and Department of Food and Nutrition at Gandhi Krishi Vignana Kendra (GKVK); St John’s Medical College and the All India Coordinated Small Millet Programme.
“The sequencing part of the project will be done in Switzerland,” Dr Sirisha Aluri, faculty at the Technical University of Switzerland, told Express.
The first phase of the project that began in May 2014 will conclude in three years, she said.
Experts are of the opinion that ragi is a rich source of calcium, iron and phosphorus. It is a hardy crop and can grow well in rainfall-deficient areas.
For example, to grow 1 kg of rice, 4,000 to 5,000 litres of water are needed. However, for the same quantity of ragi, only 1,500 to 2,000 litres of water are needed. Despite its obvious qualities, there has been limited research on ragi. Poor farmers grow it in areas without enough water or soil nutrients. Hence the yield is only around 1,600 to 2,000 kg per ha and so it does not fetch enough money for the farmers.
Ragi also has certain anti-nutritional factors — such as phytic acid that binds to the zinc and iron in the crop — preventing its digestion by humans.
A Wonder Crop
Dr M S Sheshshayee, associate professor at the Department of Crop Physiology, UASB Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra, told Express, “The project aims at improving drought tolerance of the crop, its yield, and availability of nutrients for quick absorption by humans.”
Sheshshayee will be looking into improving the drought tolerance, while Dr Manja Reddy at the All India Coordinated Small Millet Programme will look at increasing the yield.
Dr Geetha at the Food Science and Nutrition Department of GKVK, in collaboration with Dr Anura Kupard of St John’s Medical College, will look into understanding the bio-availability of nutrients.
Dr K B Umesh at the Department of Agri Economics at GKVK is assessing the economic impact of ragi cultivation on farmers’ income.
The genome of a single plant will be sequenced. There is a collection of diverse ragi plants (with different sequences) from all over the world at GKVK. This is an ICAR unit and is part of the All India Coordinated Small Millet Programme. More that 6,000 germ plasm collection lines are stored here.
A core collection of 600 varieties of ragi that are close to the above 6,000 lines will be compared to the sequenced plant and areas of variation in the genome will be studied.
Genes relevant to drought resistance, yield, and decreasing phytic acid amounts will be identified.
This knowledge will be useful to breed plants with improved traits of drought tolerance, better yield and decreased phytic acid to increase availability of nutrients for absorption in humans.