Research Projects

soybean, a significant crop in India, is the number one oilseed crop with a cultivated area of 12.10 mha and a productivity of 1042 kg or ha. However, its full yield potential is not being exploited due to biotic and abiotic stresses. soybean rust, caused by the fungus Phakopsora pachyrhizi, is the most devastating foliar disease, causing yield losses up to 80% under favorable conditions. Currently, rust is managed using fungicides, but this method increases input costs and environmental impact. Breeding soybean cultivars with rust resistance is the most cost-efficient method of sustainable disease management. Resistance to rust is controlled by resistant genes from seven reported loci. However, knowledge on pathotype variation in and among P. pachyrhizi populations is critical for resistance breeding. Advances in next-generation sequencing technologies have enabled the development of sequencing-based markers like sNPs for molecular breeding in soybean. This collaborative proposal aims to systematic evaluate soybean accessions to identify rust resistant lines, understand the race pattern and prevalent P. pachyrhizi pathotypes causing soybean rust in India, and identify genomic regions associated with resistance to soybean rust.