Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) is a private university located in&nbsp;Tamil Nadu, India. Founded in 1984, as Vellore Engineering College, the institution offers 20 undergraduate, 34 postgraduate, four integrated and four research programs. It has campuses in Vellore, Amravati, Bhopal and Chennai.

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Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) is one of the most important cool season food legume crops grown in many countries. Seeds are typically rich in protein, fiber, prebiotic carbohydrates and minerals, such as iron and zinc. With changing climate and variability, the lentil crop faces frequent droughts and heat stress of varying intensity in its major production zones. In the present study, a set of 162 lentil accessions selected through the Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy (FIGS) were screened for tolerance to heat stress and combined heat-drought stresses under field conditions at two contrasting locations, namely Marchouch and Tessaout in Morocco. The results showed a significant genotypic variation for heat tolerance and combined heat-drought tolerance among the accessions at both locations. Based on the heat tolerance index (HTI), accessions, namely ILL 7833, ILL 6338 and ILL 6104, were selected as potential sources of heat tolerance at Marchouch, and ILL 7814 and ILL 8029 at Tessaout. Using the stress tolerance index (STI), ILL 7835, ILL 6075 and ILL 6362 were identified as the most tolerant lines (STI > 1) at Marchouch, and ILL 7814, ILL 7835 and ILL 7804 (STI > 1) at Tessaout, under the combined heat-drought stress conditions. Accession ILL 7835 was identified as a good source of stable tolerance to heat stress and combined heat-drought stress at both locations. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Agronomy

Screening the FIGS set of lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) germplasm for tolerance to terminal heat and combined drought-heat stress

Problem soils impose various stresses on plants and significantly reduce crop yield. As a sizable area sown in food legume crops falls under the designation of problem soils, the development of tolerant varieties and appropriate agronomic practices to ameliorate problem soils is required to increase food legume production. With respect to food legume cultivation, research efforts focusing on the development of cultivars tolerant to problem soils and on integrated management practices for soil amelioration have been limited to date. Here we review the various types of problematic soils and recent efforts in the development of appropriate technologies, including high-throughput plant phenotyping, breeding of tolerant varieties, and innovations in agronomy, that are contributing to or potentially will contribute to the adaptation of food legume crops to problem soils. The significant points are: (1) recent advances in plant phenotyping platforms offer new suites of technologies that facilitate the rapid identification of new genes related to tolerance mechanisms and the rapid development of improved cultivars better adapted to adverse soil conditions; (2) advances in plant genomics and recent developments in plant phenomics contribute towards more precise measurements of plant traits of interest; and (3) improved agronomic practices with appropriate amelioration measures would help to bring about changes in the soil conditions, improving them for cultivation and also providing a practical solution for problem soils. Integrated approaches, including tolerant varieties, amelioration measures, and improved agronomic practices suitable for the region, have the potential to be a sustainable approach by which food legumes could be adapted to problem soils. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

Euphytica

Adaptation of food legumes to problem soils using integrated approaches

Development of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) varieties with low seed anti-nutritional factor, β-N-Oxalyl-L-α, β-diaminopropionic acid (ODAP) content but with high seed protein content would be beneficial for human consumption. In this study, a total of 702 germplasm accessions, from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria, were grouped into seven sets of trials based on their origin, and evaluated for seed ODAP content and seed protein content at two experimental sites, Tel Hadya and Breda over eight years. Significant genotypic differences were found for both the traits in all the germplasm sets except for seed ODAP content in BANG1 and ETH1. The effects associated with genotype × year within locations interactions were larger than genotypic effects for seed protein content in all the germplasm sets except ICARDA and for seed ODAP content in all the sets except ICARDA and PAK. The highest range was found for seed protein content (28.82-30.72%) in ICARDA germplasm set and for seed ODAP content in ETH2 (0.32-0.47%) and PAK (0.38-0.53%) germplasm sets. On the basis of best linear unbiased predictor values, new promising sources with low seed ODAP content such as ILG468, ILG1934, ILG1950 and ILG1951 and for high protein content such as ILG311, ILG670, ILG688, ILG691 and ILG708 and were identified for future grass pea breeding. © 2019, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding. All rights reserved.

Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding

Variation for seed protein and ODAP content in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus l.) germplasm collections

Aim: Narrow genetic base and limited genetic diversity are the major research constraints that affect the efficacy of class breeding methods in lentil. In order to circumvent these conditions, mutation breeding techniques were successfully employed in many studies. The present study was conducted to find the LD50 dose of gamma rays in lentil cultivar, Idlib-3 and also to develop and characterize M2 population for economically important quantitative traits. C Methodology: Initially, seeds of lentil variety Idlib-3 were treated with eight doses (45, 60, 75, 90, 100, 200, 300 and 400 Gy) of gamma rays. Germination percentage was recorded to determine LD50 by probit analysis. After determining LD50, M1 and M2 generations were raised. At M2 generation, mutant families were characterized for a set of ten different economically important traits. Results: The LD50 of gamma rays was calculated as 104.34 Gy based on the germination percentage. In M2 generation many induced mutations such aschlorophyllmutation (2. 7 6 %), stuntedgrowth (1.14%) and dwarf mutants (0.35%) wererecorded. Dunnett's test revealed a total of 13 superior families over parent for various quantitative traits. The results of Best Online Linear Unbiased Predictors (BLUPs) confirmed the recurrence and superiority of same seven families, identified in Dunnett's test for high seed yield. Interpretation: Early selection in M2 generation was found useful to identify new desirable mutant traits in lentil. The superior families identified for early maturity, high yield and more total number of pods per plants could be either utilized as direct mutants or in the future crossing program. © Triveni Enterprises, Lucknow (India)

Journal of Environmental Biology

Identification of desirable mutants in quantitative traits of lentil at early (M2) generation

In this study, a lentil variety, Idlib-3, was subjected to 100 Gy (LD50) gamma-ray irradiation. At M2, mutant families were characterized for the most beneficial agronomic traits. High genotypic coefficient of variation, broad sense heritability and genetic advance of the traits such as seed yield per plant and hundred-seed weight indicated expression of additive gene action and confirmed the response at early generation selection. Total number of pods per plant had positive correlation and the highest positive direct effect on seed yield per plant and hence the preference should be given for this trait during selection. The novel mutant families identified with early flowering, early maturity (families 5 and 90) in cluster I, and more first pod height (families 10,70 and 82) in cluster II could be utilized to breed short duration lentil varieties suitable for machine harvest. © 2018, Eesti Pollumajandusulikool. All rights reserved.

Agronomy Research

Analysis of gamma rays induced variability in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.)

At ICARDA, germplasm collections obtained from five countries namely, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Syria, Nepal and Pakistan were grouped in to seven sets of trials (BANG1, BANG2, ICARDA, ETH1, ETH2, NEP, PAK) and evaluated in two experimental locations, Tel Hadya and Breda over eight years. Characterization was done for the most desirable agronomic traits such as days to first flowering, days to 95% maturity, biological yield, seed yield, hundred seed weight and harvest index. Significant genotypic and interaction effect were found for the expression of the traits. Substantial amount of variability was revealed in the germplasm collections for most of the traits. High broad sense heritability was observed for days to first flowering and hundred seed weight indicating early phenotypic selection of these two traits. The stability over years for the seed yield (in terms of the CV), identified promising accessions such as ILG2178 in BANG1 and ILG1721, ILG1632, ILG1624, ILG1540 and ILG1501 for future breeding. © 2018, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding. All rights reserved.

Characterization of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) germplasm collections for beneficial agronomic traits

Problem soils have serious physical and chemical constraints, impose stress on crops under cultivation and reduce its yield and productivity. Research efforts towards the development of tolerant cultivars for problem soils have gained all the advances from research areas of genomics but precision phenotyping still remains challenging. This chapter illustrates different phenotyping methods which have been used to screen genotypes against various problem soil conditions, discusses bottlenecks in the classical methods of phenotyping and exemplifies the application of high-throughput (HT) phenotyping in the current field of interest through red, green, blue (RGB) imaging, infrared thermography, chlorophyll fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging technologies. The HT phenotyping is a useful technique, and when it is empowered with other tools such as high-density linkage mapping and association mapping, it can accelerate the breeding process. © Springer India 2015.

Phenomics in Crop Plants: Trends, Options and Limitations

Phenotyping for problem soils

Most of the lentil growing countries face a certain set of abiotic and biotic stresses causing substantial reduction in crop growth, yield, and production. Until-to date, lentil breeders have used conventional plant breeding techniques of selection-recombination-selection cycle to develop improved cultivars.These techniques have been successful in mainstreaming some of the easy-to-manage monogenic traits. However, in case of complex quantitative traits, these conventional techniques are less precise. As most of the economic traits are complex, quantitative, and often influenced by environments and genotype–environment interaction, the genetic improvement of these traits becomes difficult. Genomics assisted breeding is relatively powerful and fast approach to develop high yielding varieties more suitable to adverse environmental conditions. New tools such as molecular markers and bioinformatics are expected to generate new knowledge and improve our understanding on the genetics of complex traits. In the past, the limited availability of genomic resources in lentil could not allow breeders to employ these tools in mainstream breeding program.The recent application of the next generation sequencing and genotyping by sequencing technologies has facilitated to speed up the lentil genome sequencing project and large discovery of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Currently, several linkage maps have been developed in lentil through the use of expressed sequenced tag (EST) derived simple sequence repeat (SSR) and SNP markers.These maps have emerged as useful genomic resources to identify quantitative trait loci imparting tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses in lentil. In this review, the current knowledge on available genomic resources and its application in lentil breeding program are discussed. © 2015 Kumar, Rajendran, Kumar, Hamwieh and Baum.

Frontiers in Plant Science

Current knowledge in lentil genomics and its application for crop improvement

With the establishment of advanced technology facilities for high throughput plant phenotyping, the problem of estimating plant biomass of individual plants from their two dimensional images is becoming increasingly important. The approach predominantly cited in literature is to estimate the biomass of a plant as a linear function of the projected shoot area of plants in the images. However, the estimation error from this model, which is solely a function of projected shoot area, is large, prohibiting accurate estimation of the biomass of plants, particularly for the salt-stressed plants. In this paper, we propose a method based on plant specific weight for improving the accuracy of the linear model and reducing the estimation bias (the difference between actual shoot dry weight and the value of the shoot dry weight estimated with a predictive model). For the proposed method in this study, we modeled the plant shoot dry weight as a function of plant area and plant age. The data used for developing our model and comparing the results with the linear model were collected from a completely randomized block design experiment. A total of 320 plants from two bread wheat varieties were grown in a supported hydroponics system in a greenhouse. The plants were exposed to two levels of hydroponic salt treatments (NaCl at 0 and 100 mM) for 6 weeks. Five harvests were carried out. Each time 64 randomly selected plants were imaged and then harvested to measure the shoot fresh weight and shoot dry weight. The results of statistical analysis showed that with our proposed method, most of the observed variance can be explained, and moreover only a small difference between actual and estimated shoot dry weight was obtained. The low estimation bias indicates that our proposed method can be used to estimate biomass of individual plants regardless of what variety the plant is and what salt treatment has been applied. We validated this model on an independent set of barley data. The technique presented in this paper may extend to other plants and types of stresses. © 2011 Golzarian et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Plant Methods

Accurate inference of shoot biomass from high-throughput images of cereal plants

Cotton is a wide spaced and initial slow growing crop and therefore offers scope for intercropping green manure. Intercropping and incorporation of green manure supply nitrogen and increase the nutrient use efficiency and yield of cotton. Incorporation of leguminous green manure crops has the beneficial effect on soil fertility also. Green manure intercrop serves as plant protectant too. To start with green manures effect on the associate cotton growth and yield are reviewed hereunder followed by their effect on soil fertility, pest and weed control on the principle crop. © 2010 Asian Network for Scientific Information.

Asian Journal of Plant Sciences

Intercropping unconventional green manures in cotton: An organic approach for multiple benefits: A review

Salinity stress is a major factor inhibiting cereal yield throughout the world. Tolerance to salinity stress can be considered to contain three main components: Na+ exclusion, tolerance to Na+ in the tissues and osmotic tolerance. To date, most experimental work on salinity tolerance in cereals has focused on Na+ exclusion due in part to its ease of measurement. It has become apparent, however, that Na+ exclusion is not the sole mechanism for salinity tolerance in cereals, and research needs to expand to study osmotic tolerance and tissue tolerance. Here, we develop assays for high throughput quantification of Na+ exclusion, Na+ tissue tolerance and osmotic tolerance in 12 Triticum monococcum accessions, mainly using commercially available image capture and analysis equipment. We show that different lines use different combinations of the three tolerance mechanisms to increase their total salinity tolerance, with a positive correlation observed between a plant's total salinity tolerance and the sum of its proficiency in Na+ exclusion, osmotic tolerance and tissue tolerance. The assays developed in this study can be easily adapted for other cereals and used in high throughput, forward genetic experiments to elucidate the molecular basis of these components of salinity tolerance. © 2009 The Authors.

Plant, Cell and Environment

Quantifying the three main components of salinity tolerance in cereals

Three varieties, CO 4, Morden and TNHSF 239 (a pre-release culture) and two hybrids, TCSH 1 and KBSH 44, were selected for this study. Simple correlation coefficients were estimated among characters for individual varieties and hybrids. Two traits, seed yield and 100-seed weight, are Important selection indices for oil yield improvement in both varieties and hybrids. Head weight can be considered as a selection index for improvement of seed and oil yield in hybrids only. Likewise, oil content is an important selection index for oil yield improvement in varieties. It can also be inferred that the results obtained from the association analysis of pooled data for varieties and hybrids will give ambiguous results and have a negative impact on the yield improvement program. Thus it is desirable to compute separate association analyses for each variety and hybrid to identify effective selection Indices for the improvement of sunflower.

Helia

Association pattern among the yield attributes in varieties and hybrids of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.)

A study was undertaken on induced mutagenesis with CO1 and CO2 varieties of soybean. The mutagens studied were gamma rays (20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 kR) and EMS (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 mM). In an assessment to fix the LD50 value, the varieties responded differently. A subtle difference was observed between the varieties CO1 and CO2 in the degree of tolerance to the mutagens, viz., CO1, (62 kR gamma rays, 26.4 mM EMS) and CO2 (58.3 kR gamma rays and 25.7 mM EMS). It is concluded that CO1 tolerate higher doses of gamma rays and EMS. In general, the treated population had manifested a reduced expression than the untreated population in all the biometrical traits. Reduction in phenotypic expression is linear with the dose or concentration of the mutagens in M 1 generation. The mutagen gamma ray manifested higher percentage of reduction than EMS. In M2, EMS induced higher proportion of chlorophyll mutants than gamma rays. Among viable mutants, sterile mutant occurred more predominantly followed by stunted growth in both the varieties due to the effect of mutation. Induced mutations delivered fairly good amount of genotypic coefficient of variation, the heritability, GA as percent of mean with respect to number of seeds per plant, seed yield per plant and hundred seed weight for both the mutagen in both the varieties, indicating the scope for improving the soybean yield by selection. The mutants with four seeded pods, bold seeded types and increased number of pods per plant were isolated from this experiment. © 2006 Asian Network for Scientific Information.