Translational genomics and molecular breeding for enhancing precision and efficiency in crop improvement programs: Some examples in legumes

Legumes like chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut areprotein rich, nutrient-dense, and nitrogen fixing crops.Their importance is increasingly recognized in view of theurgent need to address burgeoning malnutrition problemand to impart sustainability to cropping systems. Breedingprograms in these crops have achieved great success.However, consistent improvement in genetic gainsdemands integration of innovative tools and technologieswith crop breeding programs. Genomic resources are ofparamount significance in context of improving theefficiency and precision of crop breeding schemes. Thelast decade has witnessed a remarkable success ingenerating unprecedented genomic resources in thesecrops, thus transforming these genomic orphans intogenomic resource rich crops. These genomic resourcesinclude array-based genotyping platforms, high-resolutiongenetic linkage maps/HapMaps, comprehensivetranscriptome assemblies and gene expression atlas, andwhole genome sequences etc. Further progression fromthe training phase (development) to breeding (deployment)phase is marked with the current availability of a variety ofmolecular breeding products in these legume crops. In thepresent review, we discuss how deployment of the moderngenomic resources such as next-generation gene discoverytechniques and “gold standard experimental designs” isfurthering our knowledge about the genetic underpinningsof trait variation. Also, key success stories demonstratingthe power of molecular breeding in these legume crops arehighlighted. It is opined that the breeding populationsconstantly improved by sequence-based breeding approachwill greatly help improving breeding traits and the geneticgains accruable from crop breeding programs.