ICAR develops India's first complete pigeonpea genome, boosting pulse breeding research

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed India's first fully annotated telomere-to-telomere (T2T) reference genome of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), a milestone expected to accelerate the development of high-yielding, climate-resilient and nutritionally superior pigeonpea varieties. The newly developed genome, based on the popular pigeonpea variety 'Asha', has also been approved as the global reference genome for the crop. Commonly known as Arhar or Tur, pigeonpea is one of India's most important pulse crops and a key source of dietary protein, playing a crucial role in the country's food and nutritional security. The achievement marks another milestone for ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology (ICAR-NIPB), New Delhi, which had created the world's first draft genome of a pulse crop in 2011. That project also made pigeonpea the first crop whose genome was sequenced entirely in India. After publishing an improved version in 2017, scientists have now completed the full telomere-to-telomere genome sequence, providing the most comprehensive genetic blueprint of the crop to date. According to ICAR, the genome contains 752.65 million DNA base pairs assembled into 92 contigs, representing all 11 chromosomes of pigeonpea. The reference genome includes all 11 centromeres and 22 telomeres, confirming chromosome-level completeness. Scientists also identified...