Research Projects

Lentil, a diploid and self-pollinated crop, provides essential nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. It plays a crucial role in alleviating malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries. Lentil also increases soil fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, diversifying cereal-based cropping systems worldwide. However, salinity is a severe environmental stress that limits the productivity of lentils, especially in irrigated arid and semiarid regions. Excessive salt levels affect chlorophyll, membrane stability, seedling biomass, and entire plant growth stages. Salinity produces high levels of Na+ and Cl− ion concentrations, mainly in the rhizosphere, which can either inhibit plant water uptake or accumulate Na+ and Cl− ions as toxic effects. Lentil is a salt-sensitive legume crop with a yield loss of 90% at 30 mM NaCl compared to wheat, barley, and canola. Developing salt-tolerant lentil cultivars would ensure the pulses food industry's production and sustainability. Advances in NGS technologies have allowed for the use of SNP markers in lentils to facilitate genetic dissection of germplasm collections to phenotypic traits. Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) is an effective method for genotyping and SNP discovery in crops. Genotyping by sequencing (GWAS) is the most powerful approach for identifying genomic regions/QTLs linked within phenotypic traits in natural populations. Lentil crops have been assessed in various crops like wheat, rice, and chickpea, but little attention has been given to their salt tolerance. This study emphasizes genome-wide association mapping for salt tolerance in lentils at the seedling and reproductive growth stages.

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