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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | As dal prices soar, seeds of hope in genome map

As dal prices soar, seeds of hope in genome map

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published Published on Nov 4, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 4, 2011
-The Telegraph
 
Indian plant biologists have sequenced the full genome of pigeonpea, arming themselves with information that they say will help speed up the development of improved pigeonpea varieties and boost yields of India’s most popular pulse.

A consortium of scientists from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and several academic institutions has identified 47,004 genes that code for proteins in the pigeonpea (arhar or tur), a grain legume that is consumed nationwide as yellow dal.

India produces about 4 million tonnes of pigeonpea every year, accounting for 85 per cent of the world’s pigeonpea crop. The average output has remained stagnant at about 650kg of pigeonpea per hectare of cultivated area over the past five decades, contributing to soaring prices of dal.

“We want to increase the output — push it to 1000kg per hectare,” said Nagasami Nadarajan, the director of the Indian Institute of Pulses Research in Kanpur. “The genome sequence could help us sharply accelerate our breeding programmes for better varieties of pigeonpea.”

Scientists involved in the pigeonpea sequencing project have identified 1,213 genes that play a role in disease resistance and 152 genes that play a role in tolerance of plants to drought, heat and high-salt levels in soil. Such sequences could be used as markers for future breeding.

Conventional breeding involves crossing two parent varieties and hoping that offspring would possess favourable traits. “But in conventional breeding, we evaluate each offspring through field experiments that are time-consuming, taking years,” Nadarajan told The Telegraph.

“The genome sequence will help us pursue marker-assisted breeding. We just test the offspring DNA for presence of markers for favourable traits such as disease resistance of heat tolerance.

“What earlier took a decade or longer could be done in three to five years,” he said.

In their five-year project, scientist Nagendra Singh at the National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology in New Delhi and his colleagues sequenced a popular pigeonpea variety named Asha, which has a high yield and is resistant to common diseases that strike pigeonpea crops.

In an effort to meet domestic demand, India imports pigeonpea from Myanmar — the world’s second largest pigeonpea producer. India is thus the world’s largest producer, consumer, and importer of pigeonpea. The third largest producer is Malawi in Africa.

This is the first plant genome and the second genome of any organism to be fully sequenced exclusively by Indian scientists.

Four years ago, scientists led by the biologist Seyed Hasnain in Hyderabad had sequenced a bacterium which falls in the family of bacteria that cause infectious diseases.


The Telegraph, 4 November, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111104/jsp/nation/story_14707046.jsp


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