Pulse Crops: Biotechnological Strategies to Enhance Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Abstract

Pulse crops are leguminous plants whose grains are used exclusively for food. In Asia, Africa and many developing countries, pulses constitute a major source of dietary protein and extensive efforts are being undertaken to improve pulse production. However, due to global climate change, abiotic stresses are increasingly impeding crop production. Conventional plant breeding has contributed tremendously in the development of improved crop varieties, but other biotechnological tools are needed to complement breeding efforts to accelerate development of pulse crop varieties tolerant to abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, high and low temperatures. Genomics resources such as molecular markers have started to expedite markerassisted breeding and quantitative trait loci (QTL) introgression in chickpea for drought tolerance. Similarly, transcriptomic resources such as expressed-sequence tags, and expression profiling such as microarrays also contribute to further understand abiotic stress tolerance in pulses and for the development of genic markers. In pulse crops, development of in vitro regeneration techniques and transgenics has been slow and more resources need to be allocated to expedite their development. In vitro regeneration techniques are also useful for embryo rescue of wide hybrids. Transgenics, although controversial, offer a faster means to develop abiotic stress tolerant pulse crops. While enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance in pulse crops implies higher returns in the developed countries, in developing countries it will contribute to food and nutritional security, and sustainable production. It is therefore encouraging that ICARDA, ICRISAT and CGIAR (Generation Challenge Programme) invest extensively into using new technologies for improvement of pulse crops in these regions of low-input farming.

Genetics, genomics, and breeding of black gram [Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper]

“…The pollen germination was significantly affected during higher temperatures. The plant traits such as leaf morphology (wax/pubescence), seed hardiness, pollen viability, and germination and receptivity of stigma were associated with temperature tolerance ( Ganeshan et al., 2012 ; Choudhary et al., 2014 ). The higher temperature-tolerant (>38°C ± 2°C) genotype produced seed surface with shiny luster, thin and reduced cotyledon fissures, and bold and well-structured starch granules ( Partheeban and Vijayaraghavan, 2020 ).…”