Legume Research
Web of Science
  • Year: 2026
  • Volume: 48
  • Issue: 6

Genetic Mapping of QTLs for Agronomic Traits in Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.)

  • Author:
  • Diwakar Kumar Pandit1, Sweta Sinha1, Anand Kumar2, Sareeta Nahakpam3, Dharamsheela Thakur1*
  • Total Page Count: 8
  • Page Number: 951 to 958

1Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur-812 001, Bihar, India.

2Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur-812 001, Bihar, India.

3Department of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur-812 001, Bihar, India.

*Corresponding Author: Dharamsheela Thakur, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur-812 001, Bihar, India. Email: dscdri@gmail.com

Abstract

Pigeonpea plays a crucial role in providing food and nutritional security to the people across the world. Productivity of pigeonpea has remained very low and stagnant over last five decades because of low genetic potential, poor plant type and longer crop duration of the existing cultivars. There is need to restructure the plant type through genomic tools to enhance the productivity. Therefore, the present study was done to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with key agronomic traits, including plant height, number of primary and secondary branches, number of pods per plant, pod length and number of seed per pod.

A population of 144 F2:3 lines derived from cross between genetically diverse genotypes ICPL84023 and ICP7035 was used to construct a linkage map using SSR markers.

All phenotypic traits varied widely and skewness value for plant height, pod length, and seed per pod was less than 1.0 and for number of primary branch, secondary branch and pod per plant it was more than 1.0. Single marker analysis detected 7 SSR markers associated with 5 agronomic traits; CcGM17620 located on LG_Cc8, showed maximum phenotypic variance of 19.33% for plant height. Composite interval mapping identified 2 QTLs, qPH5.1 and qPH8.1 with PVE of 3.57% and 72.52% respectively and one QTL, qPD3.1 for number of pod per plant with PVE of 8.11%. The QTLs identified in this study provide a strong foundation for further validation and fine mapping for utilization in pigeonpea improvement program.

Keywords

Linkage map, Pigeonpea, Plant type, QTL mapping, SSR marker