Lentils play a major role in the food and nutritional security of millions, particularly among lowincome Asian families, because of the high protein content of their seed. As is the case for many pulses, lentils play an important role as a rotation crop, enhancing soil fertility and providing other environmental services in production systems. While its production has risen globally at 8.6 kg/ ha/year from 1961 to 2008, the major challenge is to increase investment in lentil improvement (both research and outreach) in countries where the crop is part of the production system. Where currently grown the major abiotic stresses are low moisture availability and high temperatures in spring, and winter cold at high elevations. Among biotic stresses, rust, and vascular wilt are key, and resistance has resulted in improvements in performance. Additional production constraints include the agronomic problems of pod loss, lodging and poor crop management. Adequate variability for most genetic constraints exists within the gene pool allowing breeding. However, several key traits, such as biomass yield, pod shed, nitrogen fixation and resistance to aphids are not currently addressable by breeding because of insufficient variation. Among lentil-producing developing countries, policies have not yet focused on lentil development needs to enhance food security and provide a remunerative rotation crop for cereals. Looking towards a future in which there is likely to be less water available to agriculture, climate change, food insecurity, rising costs for inorganic nitrogen fertilizer, and an increasingly nutrition-conscious society-collectively these give a bright future for a highly nutritious food produced by a nitrogenfixing crop such as lentil adapted to the farming systems of marginal lands.
Advancement in the field of genetics and genomics after the discovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance has led to map the genes controlling qualitative and quantitative traits in crop plant species. Mapping of genomic regions controlling the variation of quantitatively inherited traits has become routine after the advent of different types of molecular markers. Recently, the next generation sequencing methods have accelerated the research on QTL analysis. These efforts have led to the identification of more closely linked molecular markers with gene/QTLs and also identified markers even within gene/QTL controlling the trait of interest. Efforts have also been made towards cloning gene/QTLs or identification of potential candidate genes responsible for a trait. Further new concepts like crop QTLome and QTL prioritization have accelerated precise application of QTLs for genetic improvement of complex traits. In the past years, efforts have also been made in exploitation of a number of QTL for improving grain yield or other agronomic traits in various crops through markers assisted selection leading to cultivation of these improved varieties at farmers' field. In present article, we reviewed QTLs from their identification to exploitation in plant breeding programs and also reviewed that how improved cultivars developed through introgression of QTLs have improved the yield productivity in many crops.
Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are invaluable gene sources for various traits of interest, yet these potential resources are themselves increasingly threatened by the impact of climate change as well as other anthropogenic and socio-economic factors. The prime goal of our research was to cover all aspects of wild Lens genetic resource management like species characterization, agro-morphological evaluation, diversity assessment, and development of representative sets for its enhanced utilization in lentil base broadening and yield improvement initiatives. We characterized and evaluated extensively, the global wild annual Lens taxa, originating from twenty seven counties under two agro-climatic conditions of India consecutively for three cropping seasons. Results on various qualitative and quantitative characters including two foliar diseases showed wide variations for almost all yield attributing traits including multiple disease resistance in the wild species, L. nigricans and L. ervoides accessions. The core set developed from the entire Lens taxa had maximum representation from Turkey and Syria, indicating rich diversity in accessions originating from these regions. Diversity analysis also indicated wide geographical variations across genepool as was reflected in the core set. Potential use of core set, as an initial starting material, for genetic base broadening of cultivated lentil was also suggested.
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