ICAR has developed two chickpea varieties in record time through genomics-assisted breeding in a first-of-its-kind effort. All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) released the 2 Chickpea varieties -“Pusa Chickpea – 10216” and “Super Annigeri – 1” during the 24th Annual Group Meet held at the Birsa Agricultural University in Ranchi.
These two new varieties with drought tolerance and disease resistance were recently identified for farming by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
Dr Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & DG (ICAR) regarded this initiative as a success story of collaboration of the ICAR Institutes, State Agricultural Universities and International Organizations like ICRISAT. Dr Mohapatra informed that such genomic interventions in the breeding will enhance much required crop productivity in the legume crops like Chickpea by building the resilience to the climate change induced stresses of different kinds.
The Director General underlined about the capitalization on the new strategy by the ICAR for breeding 24 new high yielding varieties in the other crops. He mentioned that the current focus on new high yielding varieties in Chickpea is expected to enhance the much needed pulse productivity in the country.
Dr Peter Carberry, Director General, ICRISAT expressed his gratitude on the outputs of the collaboration of ICAR, University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur and ICRISAT in the form of improved varieties. Dr. Carberry emphasized that the collaborative efforts of ICRISAT with its partners will be benefitting the smallholder farmers not only in India, but also in sub-Saharan Africa too.
Pusa Chickpea 10216
“Pusa Chickpea 10216”, a drought tolerant variety was developed by the Chickpea Breeding & Molecular Breeding team ICAR- IARI in collaboration with the Genomics Team led by Dr. Rajeev K. Varshney from ICRISAT. Pusa – 372 is a leading chickpea variety grown in the Central Zone, North East Plains Zone and North West Plains Zone. It showed 11.9 % increase in yield over Pusa 372 during two-year multi-location testing in drought conditions”, told Dr. Bharadwaj Chellapilla
Super Annigeri 1
The variety “Super Annigeri 1” has been developed by University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur (Karnataka) and in collaboration with ICRISAT. It has been developed by introgression resistance segment for Fusarium wilt from WR 315 genotype of chickpea in the genetic background of Annigeri- 1, an old; but, leading chickpea variety of Karnataka State.
Super Annigeri-1 variety has an average grain yield of 1,898 per kg and has recorded about 7% increase in yield over Annigeri-1 and is highly resistant to Fusarium wilt disease, an important yield reducing factor in South India. The variety has been identified for release in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
“Dr. Rajeev K. Varshney, Research Programme Director & Leader, Genomics Research Team comprising of Dr. T Mahendar and Dr Manish Roorkiwal and others at ICRISAT played a key role in leading the genomics-assisted breeding programmes for above mentioned two varieties”, informed Dr Bharadwaj Chellapilla
