Track 4-1-1: Plant Genetic Resources, Collection, Conversation, Evaluation and IPR Issues
Description
Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub., commonly known as guar is an important multipurpose arid leguminous crop of India, mainly cultivated in north-western parts of India. The pods of the guar plant grow in clusters giving guar the common name of clusterbean. It is mainly grown for feed, green fodder, vegetable and green manuring. Its seeds are also an important source of galactomannan (guar gum) which is used as a food ingredient and more recently as a neutraceutical. Guar gum is also having pharmaceutical importance and found to be effective in osteoarthritis, as artificial cervical mucus and for anticancer medicine in the treatment of colorectal cancer. Particularly in 2012, world demand for guar gum has skyrocketed and the price of guar has increased by approximately 230 per cent and even more, mainly because of increased oilfield shale gas demand. As a consequence, there has been a 75 per cent jump in exports from India, the largest guar producing country (Gresta et al., 2013) due to which India’s much neglected and little-known galactomannan became its biggest agricultural item of export.
To fulfill all these purposes, the increasing demand of the guar seeds cannot be compensated by present resources. Therefore, new varieties with higher gum content are urgently needed. For this, knowledge of genetic diversity among the varieties has immense importance for plant breeders. Larger variability in the initial breeding material ensures better chances of producing new desired forms of a crop (Pathak et al., 2011). Molecular markers offer a promising tool for plant breeding efforts. SSRs are highly valued molecular markers for studying genetic diversity in crop plants. But unfortunately, clusterbean is a genomically poor crop as no genomic SSRs have been developed. Literature available on the nature and magnitude of diversity in clusterbean indicates that the studies of this kind are scanty and not properly documented. Studies were therefore, required to assess the extent of genetic variability in association with the galactomannan content using reliable EST-SSRs.
Citation
Wadhwa, Neha; Aditi; Joshi, Udai Narayan; and Yadav, Neelam R., "EST-SSRs Provide a Good Measure of Genetic Diversity for Improvement of Gum Content in Cluster Bean" (2020). IGC Proceedings (1993-2023). 8.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/23/4-1-1/8
Included in
EST-SSRs Provide a Good Measure of Genetic Diversity for Improvement of Gum Content in Cluster Bean
Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub., commonly known as guar is an important multipurpose arid leguminous crop of India, mainly cultivated in north-western parts of India. The pods of the guar plant grow in clusters giving guar the common name of clusterbean. It is mainly grown for feed, green fodder, vegetable and green manuring. Its seeds are also an important source of galactomannan (guar gum) which is used as a food ingredient and more recently as a neutraceutical. Guar gum is also having pharmaceutical importance and found to be effective in osteoarthritis, as artificial cervical mucus and for anticancer medicine in the treatment of colorectal cancer. Particularly in 2012, world demand for guar gum has skyrocketed and the price of guar has increased by approximately 230 per cent and even more, mainly because of increased oilfield shale gas demand. As a consequence, there has been a 75 per cent jump in exports from India, the largest guar producing country (Gresta et al., 2013) due to which India’s much neglected and little-known galactomannan became its biggest agricultural item of export.
To fulfill all these purposes, the increasing demand of the guar seeds cannot be compensated by present resources. Therefore, new varieties with higher gum content are urgently needed. For this, knowledge of genetic diversity among the varieties has immense importance for plant breeders. Larger variability in the initial breeding material ensures better chances of producing new desired forms of a crop (Pathak et al., 2011). Molecular markers offer a promising tool for plant breeding efforts. SSRs are highly valued molecular markers for studying genetic diversity in crop plants. But unfortunately, clusterbean is a genomically poor crop as no genomic SSRs have been developed. Literature available on the nature and magnitude of diversity in clusterbean indicates that the studies of this kind are scanty and not properly documented. Studies were therefore, required to assess the extent of genetic variability in association with the galactomannan content using reliable EST-SSRs.
