Research Objective
To develop molecular maps of cultivated lentil and a wild species for use in foreground and background selection; to increase the efficiency of germplasm development through interspecific hybridization combined with molecular marker selections for adapted background.
Using markers developed in conjunction with the Cook lab at UC Davis, the research team was able to map a lentil species (L. ervoides) and use the markers to track introgression of alleles from this species in a population derived from a cross with cultivated lentil (L. culinaris). This will enable the leveraging of information out of better characterized legume species such as Medicago and soybean for use in identifying genes of interest in lentil. Through the work done in this project, the lab at the Crop Development Centre (CDC) now has experience in applying modern molecular marker techniques in the breeding program.