Hyderabad, Nov 11 (PTI): 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.

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Led by the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the team identified 29,870 genes that include 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, ICRISAT said in a press release on Thursday.

“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 rest of the world," said Rajeev Varshney, a research program director at ICRISAT and leader of the study that was published on November 10 in Nature.

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"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),” he said.

More importantly, this research provides a complete picture of genetic variation within chickpea and a validated roadmap for using the knowledge and genomic resources to improve the crop, he said.

Grown in more than 50 countries, chickpea is the world's third-most cultivated legume. It is indispensable to diets in many nations and an important source of dietary protein.

ICRISAT led the effort to sequence the first chickpea genome (a Kabuli line) in 2013. This sequence paved the way for developing molecular resources for the crop's improvement, the release said.

A larger endeavour to sequence more lines began soon after as the need to completely understand the genetic variation at species level, including in landraces and wild types, became apparent, it said.

In the latest research, the study's authors report sequencing 3,171 cultivated accessions and 195 wild accessions of chickpea that are conserved in multiple genebanks. These 3,366 accessions are representative of chickpea's genetic diversity in a much larger global collection, it said.

The cultivated chickpea species is scientifically called Cicer arietinum. The study points to C. arietinum diverging from its wild progenitor species, Cicer reticulatum, around 12,600 years ago.

“The demand for chickpea is set to increase in the coming years as the world's population rises.

Research like this is the need of the hour to help major producing countries like India boost crop production while making crops climate-resilient,” the release quoted Trilochan Mohapatra, Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and an author on the study, as saying.

“By developing many genomic resources for chickpea over the last decade, ICRISAT has helped the crop shed its ‘orphan' tag. With our partners in agricultural research for development, we will continue to research chickpea and translate findings into crop varieties that benefit farmers, consumers and nations," Jacqueline Hughes, Director General, ICRISAT, said.

ICRISAT, a non-profit international organisation, conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with partners from around the world.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)