Genomics and phenomics assisted Mungbean breeding

Abstract

Mungbean (Vigna radiata var. radiata (L.) Wilczek) is a nutritious legume crop adapted to tropical and subtropical conditions. Short duration (60 days), and tolerance to heat and drought makes mungbean a suitable crop for different cropping systems. The World Vegetable Center has established a Mungbean Minicore Collection of 296 accessions that displays a large portion of the variation available in the World Vegetable Center mungbean genebank collection of around 8,000 accessions. A wide range of useful traits including resistance to Mungbean Yellow Mosaic Disease, anthracnose, halo blight, dry root rot, powdery mildew, cowpea aphids, thrips, salt tolerance, and synchronous maturation have been identified in the minicore and have been used in mungbean breeding programs by the partners of the International Mungbean Improvement Network (IMIN). Genomics tools will support molecular breeding approaches in mungbean to introgress disease and pest resistance from landraces into high yielding elite varieties. A grant of the Agricultural Greater Good Program from Illumina allowed to resequence the whole genome of the mini-core collection lines plus important breeding materials. Multilocation field evaluation data of the mini-core collection and of breeding lines are available, and in parallel, high throughput phenotyping of the mungbean collection is ongoing to collect precise data on mungbean development and morphology. The project partners are actively engaged in the introgression of traits from donors identified during IMIN1 and are progressing testing of high performing lines.