Research Projects

Chickpea, a major food legume crop in India, contributes nearly 50% to Indian pulse production and occupies around 38% of the land under pulses. Northern Indian states such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh are the major chickpea producers. In 2021-22, chickpea yield was 13.75 million tons covering area of 10.91 million ha. (1). Despite being largest producer and consumer, India is biggest importer of chickpea (1, 2). Chickpea is a winter-season crop in northern South Asia, and low-temperature stress (0–15°C) or frost during reproductive stage is a key factor for substantial loss of flowers, and thus pods (3, 4). This inhibits yield potential by 30-40% (5-7). Moreover, due to changing climate India has experienced an increased frequency of extreme weather events, including unpredictable strong cold waves and frost, thereby causing substantial losses during winter season (8). Indeed, frost is one of major abiotic stresses that adversely affect plants’ growth and development (9, 10). To counter cold stress, plants have evolved adaptive strategies. One of the main transcriptional responses that occurs after cold stress is induction of C-repeat binding factors (CBFs), which in turn activate the expression of COR genes via binding to cis-elements in promoter of COR genes, resulting in enhancement of cold tolerance (11-13). Indeed, CBFs expression can alleviate cold-induced damage in chickpea as well (14, 15). However, apart from CBFs mediated cold response, plants undergo massive transcriptional programming during early cold exposure that includes elevated expression of noncoding RNAs comprising both small and long noncoding RNAs which include a substantial fraction of antisense long noncoding RNAs (aslncRNAs) (16, 17). Moreover, in addition to CBFs mediated cold response, plants, including Chickpea, may undergo moderate cold acclimation (18-20), indicating that noncoding RNAs play crucial role in fine-tuning optimal frost response (12, 16). aslncRNA(s) are shown to negatively regulate overlapping protein coding genes (21-24). It is highly likely that aslncRNAs may directly regulate expression levels of positive regulators of cold stress in Chickpea (25, 26). Cold induced factors with aslncRNAs could be targeted to enhance expression of cold-responsive sense genes. Presently, stress tolerance in legume crops is primarily enhanced through traditional breeding methods and genetic engineering of known stress-responsive protein coding genes (27-29). This approach, however, is limited by narrow choice on protein-coding factors thereby overlooking the vast potential of lncRNAs (30). Due to lack of studies, putative antisense lncRNAs acting as negative regulators of coding transcription factors are often not targeted (30-32). Therefore, the primary objective of this project is to engineer climate-resilient chickpea variants by harnessing regulatory potential novel aslncRNAs to enable the plants to withstand transient cold or frost stress.