Introgression of “<i>QTL‐hotspot</i>” region enhances drought tolerance and grain yield in three elite chickpea cultivars

With an aim of enhancing drought tolerance using a marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC) approach, we introgressed the QTL-hotspot region from ICC 4958 accession that harbors quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for several drought-tolerance related traits into three elite Indian chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars: Pusa 372, 362, and DCP 92-3. Of eight simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in region, two to polymorphic were used foreground selection with respective cross-combinations. A total 47, 53, 46 SSRs background case introgression lines (ILs) developed genetic backgrounds 92-3, respectively. In total, 61 ILs (20 BC3 F3 372; 20 BC2 21 92-3), >90% recurrent parent genome recovery developed. Six improved different (e.g. BGM 10216 BG 3097 4005 362; IPC(L4-14), IPC(L4-16), IPC(L19-1) 92-3) showed better performance than their parents. 10216, 16% yield gain over has been released as Chickpea by Central Sub-Committees on Crop Standards, Notification Release Varieties Agricultural Crops, Ministry Agriculture Farmers Welfare, Government India, commercial cultivation India. summary, this study reports under rainfed conditions, development lines, release through molecular breeding