Super early pigeonpea varities and hybrids: New intervener for maximized, time specific dry land productionH BShruthiauthorA JHinganeauthorMReddiSekharauthorJSrivarshaauthorT MBhosleauthorR KSaxenaauthorR KVarshneyauthorP MGaurauthorS PWaniauthorC VSameer KumarauthorA neglected crop of yester-years, pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan[L.]
Millspaugh) is a multi-purpose, versatile food legume, which
has seen greater evolution in its plant architecture, duration
and yield pattern as time passed. In rainfed ecologies across the
globe, pigeonpea fits in as a remunerative option to the farmers.
Frequent droughts in recent past have resulted in losses to
crops such as cereals, millets and oil seeds, but pigeonpea in the
same cropping niche provided at least minimum assurance to
small and marginal farmers, owing to its drought tolerance and
ability to withstand harsh environments. The enormous variability
and plasticity of the crop provided an opportunity to breeders
to develop super early maturity group with the life span of
less than 100 days. The existing maturity duration -- early (less
than 140 days) and medium (180 to 200 days) -- imposes restrictions
on adaptation to drought. The super early genotypes
provide the foundation for future pigeonpea breeding because
of their earliness, photo insensitive nature, impressive per day
productivity, adaptability across the varying range of altitudes,
stress escape mechanism and niche to fit well in various agroecologist
and cropping systems. Rapid generation turnover is a
boon to breeders for faster introgression of traits of interest, to
carry out studies on genetics of biotic and abiotic stress by developing
mapping population within very short duration. In the
above context, “super early varieties and hybrids, is a wonderful
breeding material to secure future sustainable dry land pigeonpea
production”.Plant BreedingPigeonpeaGenetics and GenomicsDrylands2017-02Conference or Workshop Item