Largest plant genome sequencing effort yields a pan-genome for chickpea, sets it up for a breeding revolution in India

An international team of researchers from 41 organisations has assembled chickpea’s (chana) pan-genome by sequencing the genomes of 3,366 chickpea lines from 60 countries. Led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the team identified 29,870 genes that includes 1,582 previously unreported novel genes. The research is the largest effort of its kind for any plant, putting chickpea in a small group of crops with such an extensive genome map. “By employing whole genome sequencing, we have been able to affirm the history of chickpea’s origin in the Fertile Crescent and identify two paths of diffusion or migration of chickpea to the rest of the world. One path indicates diffusion to South Asia and East Africa, and the other suggests diffusion to the Mediterranean region (probably through Turkey) as well as to the Black Sea and Central Asia (up to Afghanistan),” said Prof. Rajeev Varshney, Research Program Director at ICRISAT and leader of the ...