Current knowledge in lentil genomics and its application for crop improvement

Abstract

Most of the lentil growing countries face a certain set of abiotic and biotic stresses causing substantial reduction in crop growth, yield, and production. Until-to date, lentil breeders have used conventional plant breeding techniques of selection-recombination-selection cycle to develop improved cultivars.These techniques have been successful in mainstreaming some of the easy-to-manage monogenic traits. However, in case of complex quantitative traits, these conventional techniques are less precise. As most of the economic traits are complex, quantitative, and often influenced by environments and genotype–environment interaction, the genetic improvement of these traits becomes difficult. Genomics assisted breeding is relatively powerful and fast approach to develop high yielding varieties more suitable to adverse environmental conditions. New tools such as molecular markers and bioinformatics are expected to generate new knowledge and improve our understanding on the genetics of complex traits. In the past, the limited availability of genomic resources in lentil could not allow breeders to employ these tools in mainstream breeding program.The recent application of the next generation sequencing and genotyping by sequencing technologies has facilitated to speed up the lentil genome sequencing project and large discovery of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Currently, several linkage maps have been developed in lentil through the use of expressed sequenced tag (EST) derived simple sequence repeat (SSR) and SNP markers.These maps have emerged as useful genomic resources to identify quantitative trait loci imparting tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses in lentil. In this review, the current knowledge on available genomic resources and its application in lentil breeding program are discussed.

Generation and Characterisation of a Reference Transcriptome for Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.)

“…As a legume, lentils play a beneficial role in agriculture through nitrogen fixation and can also assist in management of weeds and pathogen through crop rotation. From an economic perspective, the crop generates an income for small-scale farmers in the dryland agricultural ecosystems of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia, and North Africa [9,10]. …”

“…4 Gbp [10,11]. An international genome sequencing effort to deliver the reference lentil genome is currently underway, leading to the recent release of an initial draft genome assembly from the cultivar CDC Redberry [12].…”

Molecular Breeding for Ascochyta Blight Resistance in Lentil: Current Progress and Future Directions

“…Although application of MAS to lentil has been limited until recently (Kumar et al, 2015), the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies provided opportunities for the development of DNA sequence-based markers, which are being implemented in the modern lentil breeding programs of Australia and Canada (pers. comm.…”

Perspectives on the Application of Next-generation Sequencing to the Improvement of Africa’s Staple Food Crops

“…These approaches are being adopted in crops of importance in developing countries such as in maize and wheat [121], rice [124], pulses (legumes) [11], cassava [118,120], cowpea [125], lentil [126], soybean [127,128], and pigeon pea [129]. With respect to the best practice for GS, various models are being put forward [113].…”