Harvesting Genetic Diversity from Genebank to Pigeonpea Breeding (Plant and Animal Genome XXII Conference) (original) (raw)

Date: Saturday, January 11, 2014
Time: 2:30 PM

Room: Pacific Salon 1

Rachit K Saxena ,ICRISAT, Patancheru, India

Annapurna Chitikineni ,ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India

Hari D. Upadhyaya ,ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India

Obarley Yu ,Millennium Genomics Inc., Shenzhen, China

Changhoon Kim ,MACROGEN Inc., Seoul, South Korea

Jihun Kim ,MACROGEN Inc., Seoul, South Korea

Shaun An ,Millennium Genomics Inc., Shenzhen, China

G Anuradha ,Acharaya NG Ranga Rao Agricultural University, Hyderabad, India

Wei Zhang ,Millennium Genomics Inc., Shenzhen, China

PS Dharmaraj ,University of Agricultural Sciences, ARS-Gulbarga, Raichur, India

Bellbull Kim ,MACROGEN Inc., Seoul, South Korea

Hwanseok Rhee ,MACROGEN Inc., Seoul, South Korea

Swapan K Datta ,Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, India

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.) is one of the most important food legume crops grown in marginal environments of the world. This crop is exposed to a range of biotic and abiotic stresses. Low level of genetic diversity present in the cultivated pool is another bottle neck for pigeonpea improvement. As a result, crop productivity is heavily challenged and remained stagnant (750 kg/ha) for the last six decades. Nevertheless, ICRISAT genebank has 13,632 pigeonpea accessions from 74 countries. With an objective of enhancing the use of germplasm diversity in breeding programmes, a reference set comprising of 300 most diverse accessions has been developed. Therefore, to utilize the available genomic tools (mainly genome sequence) for harnessing the genetic diversity present in the genebanks, we have conducted whole genome re-sequencing (WGRS) of the genomes of 292 lines from reference set of pigeonpea. These lines include 117 breeding lines, 168 landraces and 7 wild relatives of pigeonpea. WGRS yielded 2.15Tb of sequence data with the coverage ranging from 5X to 10X. Millions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified across wild relatives, landraces and breeding lines. Preliminary analysis has shown large variation reduction in the cultivated gene pool as compared to wild relatives and landraces. Structural variations such as copy number variations are also being identified. In summary, the availability of this rich genetic diversity at sequence level combined with the phenotyping data should provide candidate genomic regions to accelerate pigeonpea improvement.