Introgression of “QTL‐hotspot” region enhances drought tolerance and grain yield in three elite chickpea cultivars

Abstract

With an aim of enhancing drought tolerance using a marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC) approach, we introgressed the "QTL-hotspot" region from ICC 4958 accession that harbors quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for several drought-tolerance related traits into three elite Indian chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars: Pusa 372, Pusa 362, and DCP 92-3. Of eight simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in the QTLhotspot region, two to three polymorphic markers were used for foreground selection with respective cross-combinations. A total of 47, 53, and 46 SSRs were used for background selection in case of introgression lines (ILs) developed in genetic backgrounds of Pusa 372, Pusa 362, and DCP 92-3, respectively. In total, 61 ILs (20 BC 3 F 3 in Pusa 372; 20 BC 2 F 3 in Pusa 362, and 21 BC 3 F 3 in DCP 92-3), with >90% recurrent parent genome recovery were developed. Six improved lines in different genetic backgrounds (e.g. BGM 10216 in Pusa 372; BG 3097 and BG 4005 in Pusa 362; IPC(L4-14), IPC(L4-16), and IPC(L19-1) in DCP 92-3) showed better performance than their respective recurrent parents. BGM 10216, with 16% yield gain over Pusa 372, has been released as Pusa Chickpea 10216 by the Central SubCommittees on Crop Standards, Notification and Release of Varieties of Agricultural Crops, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, for commercial cultivation in India. In summary, this study reports introgression of the QTL-hotspot

MutMap Approach Enables Rapid Identification of Candidate Genes and Development of Markers Associated With Early Flowering and Enhanced Seed Size in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

“…It was collected from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India, in 1973, and it was among the over 1,500 germplasm accessions screened for drought resistance at ICRISAT Center between 1978 and 1983. It is being used as a donor parent for introgressing drought tolerance-related traits and that produces high yields in low productivity, short-duration, terminal drought-prone environments, e.g., those in peninsular India ( Varshney et al, 2013a ; Bharadwaj et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Further, efforts were also made to understand the genes and pathways involved in flower development in chickpea ( Singh et al, 2013 ), including through a gene expression atlas ( Kudapa et al, 2018 ). Although the QTLs mapped within large genomic intervals limit the identification of potential candidate genes and their use in marker-assisted selection, in recent years, using a marker-assisted backcrossing approach several high-yielding and drought-tolerant lines in different genetic backgrounds of chickpea have been released for cultivation ( Varshney et al, 2013a ; Bharadwaj et al, 2021 ). Molecular breeding lines with enhanced resistance to biotic stresses were also developed ( Varshney et al, 2014b ; Pratap et al, 2017 ; Mannur et al, 2019 ).…”

Designing Chickpea For a Hotter Drier World

“…When combined with backcrossing, i.e. marker assisted backcrossing (MABC) the technique can facilitate the transfer of a trait into an elite genetic background, for example the introgression of a QTL region into elite chickpea cultivars to improve drought tolerance (Varshney et al 2013a;Bharadwaj et al 2021). However, MAS or MABC is not the preferred approach for complex traits governed by many genes (Charmet et al 2020;Wang et al 2018).…”

Major QTLs and Potential Candidate Genes for Heat Stress Tolerance Identified in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

“…Genomic revolution, during the last two decades, simplified understanding of the complex responses to biotic and abiotic stress in several crop plants (Roorkiwal et al, 2020 ; Thudi et al, 2020 ). Chickpea research community has access to genome sequence (Varshney et al, 2013 ), genome-wide variations among diverse germplasm lines at the sequence level (Thudi et al, 2016a , b ; Varshney et al, 2019 ) for trait dissection, and the development of climate-resilient chickpea varieties (Mannur et al, 2019 ; Bharadwaj et al, 2020 ). The genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach has been extensively used for single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery and mapping traits in several crops for genetic research and breeding applications (Chung et al, 2017 ), including chickpea (Jaganathan et al, 2015 ; Thudi et al, 2020 ).…”