Genomic-assisted Breeding and Wild Germplasm Utilization for Climate-resilient Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.): Advances and Future Perspectives: A Review

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is among the most significant grain legumes in the world that are a major source of plant-based nutrition, dietary fiber and essential micronutrients to millions of individuals, especially in semi-arid areas. Nevertheless, there have been challenges in the yield of chickpea caused by a combination of climate change-related stresses, including drought, heat and salinity of the soils which seriously ensure diminished stability of the yields and performance of the crop. The existence of such a limited genetic basis of cultivated chickpea also limits the breeding opportunity to come up with resilient varieties using the conventional breeding methods. Recent improvement of genomic technologies, high throughput sequencing and molecular breeding has been able to expedite the process of identifying stress responsive genes and quantitative trait loci that is linked to climate resilience. The concepts of marker-assisted selection, genomic selection and genome-wide association studies are slowly finding their way into breeding programs of chickpea in an attempt to improve the efficiency and accuracy of selection. In addition, the new technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and speed breeding offer new possibilities of genetic enhancement and the trait editing in a short period of time. The current review is a generalization of recent advances in genomic based breeding and use of wild germplasm available in creating resistant to climatic changes chickpea cultivars. It also underscores the level of modernized genomic technology and new breeding approaches to meet the challenge in the future and achieve sustainable production of chickpea in changing climatic conditions.