The 1000 Pulse Genome Sequencing Initiative: Connecting Genes to Traits

Varshney, R.K.ORCID: 0000-0002-4562-9131 (2014) The 1000 Pulse Genome Sequencing Initiative: Connecting Genes to Traits. In: 6th International Food Legume Research Conference/7th International Conference on Legume Genetics and Genomics, 7 - 11 July 2014, TCU Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) are playing a vital role in ensuring the nutritional food security in several countries of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Average productivity of these pulses is less than 1 t ha–1 due to their expousre to several biotic and abiotic stresses. Breeding efforts to elevate the yield levels and enhance crop productivity could not be achieved due to availability of limited genomic resources andlow level of genetic diversity present in the cultivated pools. ICRISAT genebank has >20,000 and >13,000 accessions of chickpea and pigeonpea, respectively. With an objective to ‘explore this huge genetic diversity available to address the issue of low productivity and bottlenecks’ associated with narrow genetic diversity, >1000 pulse genomes including 554 chickpea (reference set, elite varieties and parents of several mapping populations) and 526 pigeonpea (reference set, hybrid parental lines, wild species accession and parents of mapping populations) genomes were sequenced at 5X to 13X coverage. These genomes were aligned to their respective reference genomes for variant calling and structural variation analysis. Detailed analysis provided comprehenisve data on diversity features, gene loss, domestication and selection sweep. Multi-location phenotyping data for high priority traits for breeding is being assembled for undertaking genome-wide association studies. In brief, this initiative is expected to identify superior/novel alleles associated with the traits of interest for enhancing crop productivity of these pulse crops.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/62223

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