• Chickpeas
• University of Saskatchewan

Objective

To make use of the chickpea genome assembly to accelerate chickpea varietal development through integration of genomic technologies into chickpea breeding program.

Outcome

Developing disease resistant and early maturing chickpea cultivars can help to overcome production constraints and improve chickpea productivity in Canada. In the current project, we have developed genomic resources that can be used in genomic assisted breeding in chickpea. Two hundred and fifty one accessions from the CDC chickpea collections were sequenced. An additional 12 wild relatives were also sequenced to analyze potential novel alleles from wild chickpea. Results of the analysis using the SNP information support the hypothesis that the wild, landraces (germplasm), and elite chickpea accessions originated from a common ancestor. The whole genome sequence information of the Canadian chickpea accessions and the SNPs associated with key traits identified in this project will be used for improving the selection program through assisted selection and genomic selection to shorten the delivery time of new cultivars with better adaptation to Canadian growing conditions.

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