%0 Book Section
%A Mallikarjuna, N
%A Saxena, K B
%A Jadhav, D R
%B Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and breeding resources Legume Crops and Forages
%C Germany
%D 2011
%E Kole, C
%F icrisat:28
%I Springer
%P 21-34
%T Cajanus
%U http://oar.icrisat.org/28/
%X The cultivation of the pigeonpea goes back to at least  3,000 years. Its center of origin is India (Vavilov 1928;  van der Maesen 1980), from where it traveled to  East Africa and, by means of the slave trade, to the  American continent. Pigeonpea is an ancient crop  as there is a mention of pigeonpea in Sanskrit and  Buddhist literature dating back to 400 BC to 300 AD  (Krishnamurthy 1991). Today, pigeonpea is widely  cultivated in all tropical and semi-tropical regions of  both the old and the new world.