Research Projects

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the key legume crops in India covering around 38% of the pulse-cultivated area. Overall, it contributes nearly to 50% to India’s pulse production. Northern Indian states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan are the leading producers. In the 2021-22 season, Chickpea production reached 13.75 MT from 10.91 MHa (FAOSTAT 2020). Despite being largest producer and consumer, India remains the biggest importer of Chickpea. Chickpea is winter-season rabi crop and particularly vulnerable to low-temperature abiotic stress (0–15°C) or frost during the reproductive phase. Mild to severe frost stress negatively impacts Chickpea vegetative organs, hampers fertilization and causes loss of flowers and pods. This severe damage to flower and pods due to cold stress results in Chickpea yield loss especially in northern India. In fact, frost can reduce the yield potential by 30-40%. Over the past decade, changing climatic conditions have led to more frequent extreme weather events, including unpredictable cold waves and frost, causing significant winter crop productivity losses (India Cold Waves, Walia A & Yadav B.P., 2023). Thus, due to abiotic stresses, there is a significant decline in pulse production from 27.3 MT in 2021-22 to 23.4 MT in 2023-24. This necessitates a 70% yield increase to meet global demands (Bita and Gerats, 2013). To cope with cold stress or freezing temperatures, plants have evolved adaptive strategies. One of the major cold induced transcriptional responses is the induction of CBFs, which activate COR genes, to enhance cold acclimation. CBFs expression offers limited relief from cold-induced damage in Chickpea because of its poor cold acclimation ability. We recently showed that apart from CBFs-mediated responses, plants undergo massive transcriptional changes early in cold exposure, including elevated expression of pervasive noncoding RNAs (Kindgren et al., 2020; Meena et al., 2024). Noncoding RNAs possess small open reading frames with the potential to encode regulatory small peptides (smPEPs). lncRNAs and preMiRNAs can generate smPEPs in animals and plants, including in Chickpea, where these peptides are crucial for development and stress resilience. Key examples include ENOD40, PSEP, POLARIS, miPEP171b, miPEP165a, and miPEP858 etc. In soybean, around 100 lncRNAs were indicated to produce smPEPs. However, potential of such novel smPEPs to enhance cold stress resilience in Chickpeas remains unexplored (Khan A W, Nature Genetics, 2024). The proposed project aims to profile and map novel smPEPs to discover small peptides from noncoding RNAs in Chickpeas under cold stress. This resource generation of smPEPs will be followed by in silico characterization and functional validation of selected smPEPs. We will also analyze in-planta roles and cold protective roles of candidate smPEPs. We hope that rich smPEPs resource to be vital for breeding programs as well in country and thus food security in India.