Analysis of Yield Factors in Earliness Related Traits and Yield in Pigeonpea

Pigeonpea productivity is greatly constrained by poor plant ideotype of existing Indian cultivars. Enhancing pigeonpea yield demands a renewed focus on restructuring the ideal plant type by using more efficient approaches like genomic tools. Pigeonpea Cajanus cajan L. Millsp. belongs to the tribe Phaseoleae in the family Leguminosae .C. cajan is the only domesticated species sub tribe Cajaninae and has a genome size of 833.07 Mbp. It is a hardy, widely adapted, drought tolerant pulse crop that is cultivated globally on 5.40 million hectares with an average annual production of 4.48 million tonnes. Due to the vast natural genetic variability in local germplasm and the presence of numerous wild relatives, India is considered as the primary center of origin and remains one of the largest pigeonpea producers accounting for 71 3.88 mha and 63.39 2.84 mt of the global area and production, respectively. Pigeonpea cultivars have a narrow genetic base due to limited utilization of wild pigeonpea species in breeding programs. The breeding efforts aimed at improving pigeonpea led to the development and release of more than 100 improved varieties over the last 50 years in India Singh et al. 2016 . However, the genetic gain from conventional breeding has remained limited over same period of time. This implies toward an urgent need to strengthen pigeonpea breeding programs with the modern genomic tools to improve their efficacy. Notwithstanding the substantial efforts directed towards pigeonpea genetic improvement, the crop productivity has remained near stagnant over the last several decades. Poor productivity of pigeonpea is due to a range of constraints, of which poor plant type and longer crop duration of existing cultivars are of paramount significance. Improving yield gains in pigeonpea calls for a renewed focus on restructuring the ideal plant type. Also, the development of short duration pigeonpea cultivars could bring significant increment in pigeonpea productivity. In pigeonpea, days to flowering and days to maturity determine earliness and the two traits are important with respect to increasing cropping intensity in rotation systems such as pigeonpea—wheat system.Plant ideotype breeding intends to deliver crop genotypes that are suitable for modern farming practices and it involves improvement in key traits such as harvest index and mechanical harvesting. In other words, ideotype breeding seeks accumulating favorable QTLs for various component traits in a given genotype. Several plant attributes including plant height, number of branches, pods per plant and synchronous maturity collectively contribute to improved plant architecture. Besides, short duration cultivars are important in light of the need for increasing cropping efficiency of farming system. Although conventional breeding in pigeonpea has delivered a range of cultivars catering to the demand of wider farming community, remodeling of plant type through deploying modern genomic tools has not yet been started . VB Singh | SS Kashyap | AK Singh "Analysis of Yield Factors in Earliness Related Traits and Yield in Pigeonpea" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-4 , June 2021, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.compapers/ijtsrd42489.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.comother-scientific-research-area/other/42489/analysis-of-yield-factors-in-earliness-related-traits-and-yield-in-pigeonpea/vb-singh