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Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.], endowed with rich dietary protein in its seed, provides the much needed protein requirements of predominantly vegetarian population. Pigeonpea plays an important role in providing food, shelter, medicine and other livelihood opportunities among the rural poor. The purpose of a core collection is to provide information necessary to improve the use of genetic resources in crop improvement programs. In many crops the number of germplasm accessions in the genebanks are in several thousands. Even a core collection (consisting of 10% of total accessions) is large and becomes unwieldy to evaluate and characterize the accessions for economic traits. Hence, a mini core collection of pigeonpea, comprising 146 accessions was constituted by evaluating a core collection of 1290 accessions. Examination of data for various morphological and agronomic traits indicated that almost the entire genetic variation and a majority of coadapted gene complexes present in the core subset are preserved in the mini core subset. Due to its greatly reduced size, the mini core subset will provide a more economical starting point for proper exploitation of pigeonpea genetic resources for crop improvement for food, feed, fuel, and other agricultural and medicinal purposes.

ICGV 87354, a drought tolerant peanut (Arachis hypogaea L. Fabaceae subsp. hypogaea var. vulgaris) germplasm (Reg. no. GP-97, PI 568164) was released in 1999 by the Plant Materials Identification Committee [...]

Abstract: A groundnut core collection was evaluated in two seasons to identify 21 early maturing landraces. Phenotypic diversity of these 21 early maturing landraces was assessed in three rainy and five post-rainy seasons, along with the three known sources of early maturity (Chico, Gangapuri, and JL 24). The new sources differed in 8 of 14 morphological traits studied. Of the 14 agronomic and 2 quality traits studied, 8 yield and yield-component traits were evaluated at two harvest dates. The landraces matured in 80–90 days after sowing (DAS), similar to Chico and Gangapuri (80–90DAS) and earlier than JL 24 (90–95DAS). Four new early maturing landraces [ICG 4558 (India); ICG 4890 (Argentina); ICG 9930 (Zimbabwe); ICG 11605 (Bolivia)], with predominantly three to four seeds per pod, were identified as additional sources for breeding confectionery groundnut varieties. Correlation coefficients between the observations made at the two harvest dates for the seven yield traits were ≥0.71, indicating a single observation is sufficient at 75DAS or 90DAS in initial characterization. Correlation between pod yield and 100-seed weight was significant in all the eight seasons individually and overall at 90DAS. Presence of additional phenotypic diversity in the new early maturity landraces was detected. Principal component analysis (PCA) using the first 10 PC scores delineated the 21 landraces into three clusters. The formation of these clusters could neither be explained on the basis of geographic areas of landraces collection nor on the basis of botanical varieties. This might reflect the nascent variation acquired by the landraces in their secondary habitats, under ecologically similar conditions, independent of their countries of origin. Landraces in clusters 2 and 3 showed a wide range for several agronomic traits, indicating their usefulness in breeding programs for developing early maturing high yielding broad based cultivars. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Features various germplasm registered as of January 1997. Includes pigeonpea elite germplasm ICPL 87162; Mi-1 root-knot nematode resistant beet germplasm line; ICCV 7 chickpea germplasm.