Chickpea genetic resources and its utilization in India: Current status and future prospects

Abstract

Chickpea is recognized as most nutritious pulse crop and
with respect to acreage, it ranks at the top among pulses in
India. Realizing the significance of plant genetic resources,
special efforts were made by the National Bureau of Plant
Genetic Resources (NBPGR) to collect the chickpea
germplasm from different states of India including certain
useful introductions from other countries. A large number
of germplasm accessions including wild species were
characterized and evaluated for various agro-morphological
traits using chickpea minimal descriptor.Thus, extensive
germplasm collections now exist in various gene banks of
the world including India. As far as germplasm maintenance
is concerned, a core set developed by ICRISAT comprising
of 1956 accessions and mini core set of 211 accessions
representing diversity for seed yield and its component
traits. Further, core set developed by NBPGR consisting of
1103 accessions extracted from 14651 accessions conserved
in the Indian National Gene Bank revealed that 70% of
materials belong to Indian origin. The characterization and
evaluation experiments of chickpea conducted across the
country led to the registration of some unique germplasm
accessions for different trait of interest. However, using
crop wild relatives, several interspecific crosses and advance
pre-breeding lines were developed by the pulse research
institutions in India. The trait of interest incorporated
especially from C. reticulatum, C. echinospermum and C.
judaicum species for widening the genetic base of cultivated
gene pool. Some pre-breeding lines have been suggested
as useful donors in national chickpea crossing
programmes.