Exploitation of Wild Cicer Species for Enriching Genetic Variability for Chickpea Improvement.

Genus Cicer contains 44 species including 35 wild perennial, eight wild annual and the cultivated annual chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Chickpea is an important grain legume crop primarily cultivated for its protein-rich seeds. There has not been much genetic improvement in chickpea because of narrow genetic base of cultivated genepool. Wild Cicer species possess high levels of resistance/tolerance to many biotic/abiotic stress and hold a great potential for enriching the genetic variability in primary genepool for chickpea improvement. Though the importance of wild species as a source of genetic variations is well known, their exploitation for cultivar improvement is limited due to various factors such as long duration and non-synchronization of flowering with cultivated chickpea, cross-incompatibility barriers as well as linkage drag. To overcome these difficulties, studies conducted at ICRISAT have revealed the use of vernalization and/or extended photoperiod treatments for synchronizing the flowering of wild Cicer species with the cultivated chickpea and have contributed significantly to chickpea pre-breeding. Evaluation of wild Cicer accessions has resulted in the identification of new sources possessing high levels of resistance to multiple stresses such as ascochyta blight, botrytis grey mold, dry root, and pod borer. The promising wild accessions and popular chickpea cultivars are being used to combine the useful genes from different wild species into cultivated genetic background following complex interspecific crosses. This has led to the development of new genepools/pre-breeding populations exhibiting enormous genetic variability, high frequency of useful genes, and wider adaptability for further use in chickpea improvement programs to develop new cultivars with a broad genetic base. Further, the availability and use of molecular markers will greatly help in reducing the linkage drag and increasing the efficiency of introgression of desirable genes in pre-breeding populations.