Growing wild chickpeas

Wild, perennial Cicer spp. were grown with varying success. Cicer judaicum and Cicer cuneatum were grown easily, whereas Cicer bijugum, Cicer pinnatifidum, Cicer reticulatum and Cicer chorassanicum posed some problems. Cicer yamashitae and Cicer echinospermum have to be very carefully nurtured. Thus far only C. reticulatum has produced fertile hybrids with Cicer arietum as the female parent. Other crosses failed, or the seeds obtained produced sterile offspring. Better results can be expected under controlled environments. Several hints are given to improve production of wild Cicer spp. Crossing seems to present formidable barriers, howeve

Pigeonpea genetic resources at ICRISAT

An extensive germplasm collection is the cornerstone of any effective plant breeding program. ICRISAT in India maintains collections of 8,815 pigeonpea cultivars from 32 countries. The majority originated in India. Seed and information on available cultivars is available to any qualified researcher. Germplasm stock is also maintained for wild relatives of the pigeonpe

Taxonomy of grain legumes

The taxonomy; of grain legumes is relatively uncomplicated compared to that of cereals, brassicas and some other groups of plants because, in general, only limited gene pools have been available for selection and subsequent plant breeding. Then again, intergeneric legume hybrids are not known in nature and artificial crosses attempting to create them are seldom, if ever, successful [64]. Indeed, the genetic barriers between species and species groups are often substantial [86,87]. The classification' of interfertile species and infraspecific variants is inherently more difficult and the taxonomic situation in grain legumes is not exceptional. In some instances the available information would now seem to justify updating of the taxonomic framework

Use made of wild legume relatives in breeding

Presently vast genetic resources are available for improvement of the main crops used by humans and animals. The ex-situ collections safeguard those resources collected in the past, although not all collections are safe even today as far as personnel and facilities are concerned. Use of in-situ collections is feasible but meeting with obstacles. Free accessibility is not as straightforward as has been in the past. Apart from the cultivated accessions of crops, wild relatives have always attracted breeders, for these contril?ute many useful traits. Their genetic background, particularly of species in the secondary or tertiary genepool, makes transfer difficult requiring new techniques to effectuate gene transfers. There have been many attempts and evaluation and conservation of wild relatives is usually a task taken up by most genebanks. Genetic modification, the modem way of transferring wanted genes, has barely begun for the legume food crops. This paper presents some examples of successful use made of wild relatives of chickpea, pigeonpea, fababean and lentil for breeding ) during the past decennia

Inheritance of some qualitative characters in chickpea (Geer arietinum L.)

Inheritance of eight morphological characters, namely, prostrate growth habit; narrow, bicompound and simple leaves; purple and light green foliage colours; light blue corolla and green seed coat colour, was studied. AU the traits except the light blue corolla showed monofactorial recessive inheritance, while the light blue corolla involved interaction of two recessive factors. Joint segregations of narrow leaf and double-flowered peduncle and simple leaf and light blue corolla were studied, and in both cases no linkage was detected

Species affinities between Cajanus cajan and some Atylosia species based on esterase isoenzymes

Esterase isozymes were studied in seed extracts of Cajanus cajan and six Atylosia species by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and isoelectrofocusing. The isozyme patterns were stable and accession specific. Within the accessions of the Atylosia species, A. albicans and A. scarabaeoides showed three common bands indicating that they are more closely related to each other than to the other species. Of the accessions of Atylosia only A. cajanifolia shares the esterase isozyme of C. cajan and hence seems to be the closest wild relative of C. cajan

Induced autotetraploidy in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

In chickpea, out of three colchicine concentrations and two treatment durations used (combinations of 0.25, 0.05, 0.025% colchicine and 4 and 6 h duration), seed treatment with 0.25% for 4 h proved to be the most effective in producing autotetraploids. Colchicine treatment on seedlings failed. The induced tetraploidy was accompanied by larger leaves, flowers, stomata, pollen grains and seeds. Mean percentage stainable pollen and podset were reduced, but some plants had relatively normal meiosis and produced as many pods as the diploid parent, indicating the potential of induced autotetraploids in chickpea improvement

Genetic Patterns of Domestication in Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) and Wild Cajanus Relatives

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) is an annual or short-lived perennial food legume of acute regional importance, providing significant protein to the human diet in less developed regions of Asia and Africa. Due to its narrow genetic base, pigeonpea improvement is increasingly reliant on introgression of valuable traits from wild forms, a practice that would benefit from knowledge of its domestication history and relationships to wild species. Here we use 752 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) derived from 670 low copy orthologous genes to clarify the evolutionary history of pigeonpea (79 accessions) and its wild relatives (31 accessions). We identified three well-supported lineages that are geographically clustered and congruent with previous nuclear and plastid sequence-based phylogenies. Among all species analyzed Cajanus cajanifolius is the most probable progenitor of cultivated pigeonpea. Multiple lines of evidence suggest recent gene flow between cultivated and non-cultivated forms, as well as historical gene flow between diverged but sympatric species. Evidence supports that primary domestication occurred in India, with a second and more recent nested population bottleneck focused in tropical regions that is the likely consequence of pigeonpea breeding. We find abundant allelic variation and genetic diversity among the wild relatives, with the exception of wild species from Australia for which we report a third bottleneck unrelated to domestication within India. Domesticated C. cajan possess 75% less allelic diversity than the progenitor clade of wild Indian species, indicating a severe “domestication bottleneck” during pigeonpea domestication