Deepak Singh

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.

Global Poverty, Hunger, and Malnutrition: A Situational Analysis

The world continued to face problems of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, although good progress has been made in this direction by national governments and international development institutions. About 52 % of the population in the developing world thrives on less than

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

1.25 per day during 1981 which has declined significantly to 17 % during 2011. Despite over 59 % increase in population in the developing world, the people living in extreme poverty have significantly declined from 1.96 million in 1981 to 1.01 million in 2011. Sub-Saharan African and South Asian regions are home to most number of poor people. Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of hunger. Still about 805 million people are suffering from chronic hunger and nearly two billion people worldwide are affected by micronutrient deficiencies. Among children, about 162 million (one fourth) under five years of age are chronically malnourished (stunted), about 99 million are underweight, and nearly 55 million are acutely malnourished (wasted). In this context, a situational analysis is carried out involving an integrated approach including agricultural development as it is the key for eradicating poverty and reducing the prevalence of hunger and malnutrition. In addition, biofortification of food crops is a feasible alternative to reduce malnutrition.

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

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.

Genetic improvement of mungbean and urdbean and their role in enhancing pulse production in India

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.

Luminescent behavior of cadmium sulfide quantum dots for gallic acid estimation

The initial varietal development in mungbean and urdbean focused mainly on selection from landraces or the germplasm samples collected, purified and evaluated. However, systematic efforts were made by National Agricultural Research System comprising Indian Council of Agricultural Research and State Agricultural Universities through All India Coordinated Pulses Improvement Project for varietal improvement. National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources and AICPIP centres collected over 8,000 Vigna genetic resources and also introduced germplasm from other countries and made them available for evaluation. Several resistant donors were identified and used to transfer gene(s) for biotic stresses. As a result, a number of high yielding varieties were developed through intraspecific hybridization. Large numbers of these varieties are resistant to one or more major diseases of the specific agro-eclogical niches. Six varieties in mungbean and two in urdbean were also developed through inter-specific hybridization which had new plant type and resistance to prevalent diseases. However, limited success has been achieved for the development of varieties with resistance to insect-pests and abiotic stresses. There is a need to intensify research in these areas through introgression of desirable alleles from secondary and tertiary gene pool into the cultivated type for yield, photo period and temperature insensivity and insect pest tolerance. The onset of genomics provides massive amount of information, but the success will depend on precise phenotyping to achieve desired restructuring in existing plant type.