Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.), also known as Redgram, is an economically and nutritionally important grain legume crop belonging to the Cajaninae sub-tribe of the tribe Phaseoleae under sub-family Papilionoideae of family Leguminosae. Considering the vast natural genetic diversity in the germplasm and the presence of many wild relatives, India is considered as the primary center of origin of pigeonpea (Van der Maesen, 1980). It is one of the hardy, drought tolerant and important pulse crops in Indian agriculture with large temporal variation for maturity which allows its cultivation in a range of environments and cropping systems. It is the only cultivated food legume crop having a diploid genome comprising of 11 pairs of chromosomes
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Among all the wild relatives of pigeonpea, C. cajanifolius is the most closely related wild species of pigeonpea, and is considered as the progenitor of cultivated type that differs only by a single gene (De, 1974) coding for the presence of a prominent strophiole. Out of the 20 species in the tertiary gene pool of pigeonpea, only one species C. platycarpus has been used to transfer many useful traits such as resistance to Fusarium wilt, Phytophthora blight and Helicoverpa, early maturity, photo-insensitivity, high pod setting, large seed size , high growth rate and high Harvest …show more content…
Out of the total (3.9 mha) area under pigeonpea, about 1.1 mha is affected by waterlogging, causing an annual loss of 25-30% (Sultana et al., 2010). Pigeonpea genotypes are more prone to waterlogging than the wild cultivars in the Cajanus genus which exhibits high level of resistance to water-logging challenge. Therefore, genotypes of wild species are good source for developing waterlogging tolerant cultivars in pigeonpea. The genetic base of pigeonpea cultivars is quite narrow as only 57 parental lines have been used for the development of varieties through hybridization (Kumar et al., 2004). Furthermore, the harvest index of pigeonpea varieties is very low about 20 percent. Therefore, quantum jump in pigeonpea yield has not been
Among all the wild relatives of pigeonpea, C. cajanifolius is the most closely related wild species of pigeonpea, and is considered as the progenitor of cultivated type that differs only by a single gene (De, 1974) coding for the presence of a prominent strophiole. Out of the 20 species in the tertiary gene pool of pigeonpea, only one species C. platycarpus has been used to transfer many useful traits such as resistance to Fusarium wilt, Phytophthora blight and Helicoverpa, early maturity, photo-insensitivity, high pod setting, large seed size , high growth rate and high Harvest …show more content…
Out of the total (3.9 mha) area under pigeonpea, about 1.1 mha is affected by waterlogging, causing an annual loss of 25-30% (Sultana et al., 2010). Pigeonpea genotypes are more prone to waterlogging than the wild cultivars in the Cajanus genus which exhibits high level of resistance to water-logging challenge. Therefore, genotypes of wild species are good source for developing waterlogging tolerant cultivars in pigeonpea. The genetic base of pigeonpea cultivars is quite narrow as only 57 parental lines have been used for the development of varieties through hybridization (Kumar et al., 2004). Furthermore, the harvest index of pigeonpea varieties is very low about 20 percent. Therefore, quantum jump in pigeonpea yield has not been