Role of classical breeding in improvement of pulse crops

Classical breeding of many crops has been instrumental for ensuring food security by developing new varieties that are higheryielding, resistant to pests and diseases, drought-resistant or regionally adapted to different environments and growing conditions. A total of 513 cultivars of different pulse crops including chickpea, pigeonpea, mungbean, urdbean, lentil, fieldpea and rajmash were developed in India itself during last three decades. Adoption of high yielding varieties in early 1980's increased the average productivity of the country by 34 % now. Significant achievements have been made in developing short duration cultivars in almost all pulse crops with incorporation of photothermo insensitivity. Genetic resistance for most of the diseases have been identified and incorporated in development of disease resistant cultivars. In fieldpea, a major breakthrough has been made by developing dwarf and afila plant type which led to increase in yield by 30%. Although cultivar development has traditionally emphasized improvement through pedigree selection, mass –pedigree method and backcross breeding, interspecific hybridization has also received much attention in 1980s. So far eight genotypes in different pulse crops have been developed in the country using interspecific hybridization. In pigeonpea a trait cytoplasmic male sterility has been introduced through wild gene introgression. Using this, a hybrid GTH 1 in pigeonpea has been developed in India which has yielded 27% yield superiority than the traditional cultivars.