We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry.
We focus on grains and food industry. current time
A Complete genetic map could change the future of India’s Pigeonpea
Indian scientists have mapped the entire genome of pigeonpea the pulse most of us know simply as arhar or tur down to its finest detail, a feat that gives researchers a near-perfect genetic blueprint of the crop for the first time. The work was carried out by ICAR’s National Institute for Plant Biotechnology in New Delhi, using the ‘Asha’ variety, and represents what’s known as a telomere-to-telomere genome, meaning the sequence runs unbroken from one end of every chromosome to the other.
This isn’t the institute’s first attempt at cracking pigeonpea’s genetics. Back in 2011, the same team put together the world’s first draft genome of any pulse crop, a milestone that also happened to be the first crop genome ever sequenced entirely within India. A refined version followed in 2017. What’s landed now, though, is a far more complete picture every one of pigeonpea’s 11 chromosomes mapped in full, right down to their centromeres and telomeres.
The numbers behind the achievement are substantial. The genome spans over 752 million DNA base pairs, pieced together across 92 contigs, and researchers have identified more than 36,500 genes within it. The sequence has since been uploaded to the international NCBI database and made publicly available as of April this year, with transcriptome testing confirming its accuracy at over 99.9 percent.
For India’s pulse breeding programmes, this is more than an academic milestone. Scientists now have a detailed enough map to hunt for genes tied to yield, nutrition and climate resilience, and to apply modern breeding and gene-editing tools with far greater precision. That matters given the government’s push under its Aatmanirbharta in Pulses mission, which is targeting close to 35 million tonnes of pulse production by 2030-31 as part of a broader effort to cut import dependence and improve returns for farmers growing crops like arhar.
