Plant and Soil Science Associate Professor Eric Bishop von Wettberg announced the publication of research in the journal Nature by a collaborative group of Wettberg’s colleagues abroad, and led by Dr. Rajeev Varshney at ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
The paper describes the whole genome resequencing of 3366 chickpea accessions from around the world. This is the largest sequencing effort for this important staple crop across the semi-arid tropics, and lays the groundwork for improved future breeding efforts.
An article about the research on the ICRISAT website stated, ” grown in more than 50 countries, chickpea is the worlds third-most cultivated legume. It is indispensable to diets in many nations and an important source of dietary protein, especially in the Global South.”