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Legumes are the second-largest source of food after cereals, all over the world, and an essential protein source in the vegetarian diet. These crops remain essential to subsistence production as they have the inherent capacity to survive in an adverse ecosystem and require minimum investment for their management. The increasing challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population places excessive pressure on current food production systems, which can no longer be sustained by traditional plant breeding alone. Therefore, modern breeding methods with increased genetic gains are required to meet the food demand of the increasing population. In the past few decades, the efficiency of legume crop breeding programs has increased considerably using novel and multidisciplinary approaches in breeding programs. A multidisciplinary approach combining conventional plant breeding, mutation breeding, plant biotechnology, and molecular breeding is strategically ideal for production of new and improved crop varieties. This chapter focuses on recent advancements in plant biotechnology, related molecular methods, phenomics, and their application in breeding of legume crops.

A bright orange-red emanating Ca9Bi1−x(VO4)7:xSm3+ (x = 0.05–0.5) nanophosphor crystalline series has been synthesized for the first time through solution combustion route. X-ray diffraction pattern of Ca9Bi0.80Sm0.20(VO4)7 was analyzed and processed using Rietveld Refinement. The nanophosphors synthesized were found to crystallize in trigonal crystal lattice with R3c(161) space group. The morphological behavior of prepared nanophosphors was studied by means of transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The photoluminescence nature of the nanophosphors corresponds to bright orange emission due to near-ultraviolet (NUV) excitation at 405 nm followed by 4G5/2 → 6H7/2 radiative relaxation. The chromaticity coordinates (x = 0.5504, y = 0.4484) are in harmony with the intense orange-red emission. The decay curves been well fitted in 1st-order exponential decay function indicate that a single type of crystallographic site is occupied by the dopant-Sm3+ ions in host lattice. Auzel’s model was implemented to investigate into rates of nonradiative relaxation (302.008 s−1), radiative lifetime (0.76 ms), and quantum efficiency (81%) values. The crystalline and optical behavior of the synthesized orange-red emitting nanophosphors promote their usage in near UV-based WLEDS.

Background: Senecavirus A (SVA), is a positive sense small non-enveloped RNA virus which belongs to Picornaviridae family and is responsible for porcine vesicular disease. The disease has been reported in many countries since late 2014, 2015 and 2016 like USA, Canada, Brazil, China and Thailand. Methods: In this study, the metagenomic study was performed on faecal samples of pigs/piglets suffering from diarrhea in Haryana, India with the help of next generation sequencing. The cDNA library was prepared from the faecal samples and run on the Illumina MiSeq instrument followed by identification and genomic characterization. Result: This study revealed the presence of SVA in the samples. The characterization of complete genome sequence of this strain showed complete nucleotide identity (100%) with SVA genomes reported from Canada, however, the polyprotein shares 98-99% amino acid sequence similarity with the genomes currently available in the GenBank. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report of SVA infection in pigs/piglets of Haryana, India. It demonstrates that an active and urgent surveillance of the swine population is required in the region. Additionally, the veterinarians must pay immediate attention to this vesicular disease and adopt preventive measures for its control.