Ashok K. Parihar

Genetics- and genomics-based interventions for nutritional enhancement of grain legume crops: status and outlook

Meeting the food demands and ensuring nutritional security of the ever increasing global population in the face of degrading natural resource base and impending climate change is the biggest challenge of the twenty first century. The consequences of mineral/micronutrient deficiencies or the hidden hunger in the developing world are indeed alarming and need urgent attention. In addressing the problems associated with mineral/micronutrient deficiency, grain legumes as an integral component of the farming systems in the developing world have to play a crucial role. For resource-poor populations, a strategy based on selecting and/or developing grain legume cultivars with grains denser in micronutrients, by biofortification, seems the most appropriate and attractive approach to address the problem. This is evident from the on-going global research efforts on biofortification to provide nutrient-dense grains for use by the poorest of the poor in the developing countries. Towards this end, rapidly growing genomics technologies hold promise to hasten the progress of breeding nutritious legume crops. In conjunction with the myriad of expansions in genomics, advances in other ‘omics’ technologies particularly plant ionomics or ionome profiling open up novel opportunities to comprehensively examine the elemental composition and mineral networks of an organism in a rapid and cost-effective manner. These emerging technologies would effectively guide the scientific community to enrich the edible parts of grain legumes with bio-available minerals and enhancers/promoters. We believe that the application of these new-generation tools in turn would provide crop-based solutions to hidden hunger worldwide for achieving global nutritional security.

Nutritional Benefits of Winter Pulses with Special Emphasis on Peas and Rajmash

Currently, half of the global population is experiencing the severity of nutritional insecurity. In this context, food legumes lie central to the strategies established to combat against the problem of micronutrient malnutrition. Among rabi food legumes, peas and rajmash offer a wide range of health benefits which are attributed to their inherent qualities including higher protein content and enhanced concentration of essential nutrients. The health benefits of these two crops are also evident from the fact that a regular supplementation of diets with peas and rajmash helps in reducing the risks associated with coronary heart diseases and cardiovascular health problems. Similarly, higher fibre content in these pulses prevents unreasonable rising of blood sugar level in the human beings. This article outlines the growing importance of peas and rajmash especially in combating global malnutrition with their potential health benefits through consumption and biofortification and also explores the possibilities to shift the dietary pattern/habits to enhance the nutritional status of the population worldwide.

Genetic variability analysis for quantitative traits in a germplasm set of grasspea (Lathyrus spp.)

Diversity among 368 accessions of grasspea from diverse indigenous and exotic sources was assessed for various agronomic traits. Analysis of variance for quantitative traits revealed that all accessions were significantly different and a wide range of variability exists for most of the traits studied. Coefficients of genotypic and phenotypic variations suggest that there is good scope for seed yield improvement through pods/plant, seed yield/plant, biological yield and harvest index. Seed/pod, pod length, pod width, 100-seed weight, and seed yield/plant had low genetic advance which indicates that these traits are governed by non-additive gene action. Path analysis and genotypic correlation revealed that biological yield/plant and harvest index/plant were the most important yield component that could be used as selection indices for further improvement in grasspea germplasm. Promising lines like BioR 202, ET 48116, EC200324, JBT29/83, RSR/SSC-1/12 may be used in future grasspea breeding programme for improving yield/plant; number of pod/plant; harvest index and biological yield.

Variability for harvest index and biomass in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) varieties

Lentil is an important cool season food legume of our nation and positions next just to chickpea. Pulses are generally known to produce higher vegetative part and less grain yield, consequently poor harvest index. Lentil is no exception to this, and produces excess vegetative growth and support lesser grains. Therefore, in present investigation attempt has been made to screen 36 lentil varieties for biomass and harvest index in macro-sperma and micro-sperma types. Ample amount of variability were recorded for both harvest index and biomass. 37.78-62.96 per cent and 3.38 g to 40.94 gm range was noticed for harvest index and biomass, respectively. At the end of present investigation, three lentil varieties viz. L 4147, IPL 406 and PL 234 were identified as high biomass and high harvest index varieties. These varieties may be used as an agronomic base in the future lentil improvement programme for evolving high yielding varieties.

Biplot evaluation of test environments and identification of lentil genotypes with durable resistance to fusarium wilt in India

Abstract. Fusarium wilt (caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lentis) is the most crucial limiting variable for decreasing yield levels of lentils (Lens culinaris Medik.) around the world. A set of 20 diverse lentil genotypes comprising breeding lines and released varieties was evaluated, along with susceptible controls, for resistance to fusarium wilt through natural incidence for two continuous years (2010–11 and 2011–12) in six diverse lentil-growing environments in India. Analysis of variance showed that the effect of genotype (G) and environment (E) for disease incidence was highly significant. Among the three sources of variation, the biggest contribution in disease occurrence was accounted for by environment (54.68%), followed by G × E interaction (17.32%). The high G × E variation necessitated assessment of the genotypes at different locations (environments). GGE biplot analysis of the studied genotypes revealed that genotype PL 101 and released cultivar L 4076 had low levels of disease incidence. The sources of resistance to fusarium wilt have great potential for use in lentil-breeding programs. Another biplot of relationships among environments demonstrated that, among the test locations, Sehore and Faizabad, were the most effective for differentiation of genotypes. On the basis of discriminating ability and representativeness, the Sehore location appeared an ideal testing site for natural incidence of F. oxysporum f. sp. lentis.

Gene interactions and genetics for yield and its attributes in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.)

Grain yield is a complex character representing a multiplicative end product of many yield attributes. However, understanding the genetics and inheritance that underlies yield and its component characters pose a prerequisite to attain the actual yield potential of any crop species. The knowledge pertaining to gene actions and interactions is likely to direct and strengthen the crop breeding programmes. With this objective, the present investigation was undertaken by using six generations derived from three different crosses in grass pea. The study underscores the significance of additive–dominance model, gene action involved in inheritance of quantitative characters and heritability. Of note, nonallelic interactions influencing the traits were detected by both scaling test and joint scaling test, indicating the inadequacy of the additive–dominance model alone in explaining the manifestation of complex traits such as yield. Besides, additive (d) and dominance (h) gene effects, different types of interallelic interactions (i, j, l) contributed towards the inheritance of traits in the given crosses. Nevertheless, predominance of additive variance suggests a difference between homozygotes at a locus with positive and negative alleles being distributed between the parents. Duplicate epistasis was prevalent in most of the cases for traits like plant height, seeds/pod, 100-seed weight and pod width. In view of the diverse gene actions, i.e. additive, dominant and epistasis, playing important roles in the manifestation of complex traits like yield, we advocate implementation of population improvement techniques in particular reciprocal recurrent selection to improve productivity gains in grass pea.