Breeding and genomics approaches for improving productivity gains in chickpea under changing climate

Chickpea is a well-recognized global grain legume that plays an important role for providing plant-based protein security to global human population. Given the rising uncertainties in global climate coupled with growing occurrence of various pests and diseases and a range of abiotic stresses, global chickpea production is seriously challenged. Therefore, conventional breeding approaches are not adequate to meet the rising demand for chickpea. Evolving genomic technologies have yielded considerable success in accelerating molecular breeding program in various crops. To this end, unprecedented advances in genome sequencing technologies facilitated largely by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have allowed decoding of whole genome sequences of both cultivated and wild species of chickpea. These developments have opened up great opportunity to improve the efficiency of chickpea breeding programs through deployment of large-scale genomic tools. Efforts are underway to re-sequence multiple genomes for identifying new haplotypes of traits of breeding importance in the crop from wider germplasm resources such as the core collection and reference sets. Taken together, these massive genomic resources including the high-density genotyping assays have allowed chickpea breeders to embrace modern breeding techniques like genomic selection (GS) for enhancing genetic gain. This chapter focuses on the genomics-assisted improvement of chickpea, with an emphasis on the traits that impart resilience to changing climate. In addition to genomics, we highlight progress and possibilities of transgenic research for improving tolerance against biotic and abiotic stress resistance in chickpea. Moreover, the introduction of novel breeding schemes such as “speed breeding”, CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing holds great promise for accelerating the genetic gains projected to meet the ever-increasing demand for plant-based proteins.