ICRISAT among 11 global ‘Hubs’ to accelerate the use of natural genetic diversity to advance crop improvement

Using chickpea as the case species, one of the proposed 11 hubs of DivSeek International will develop and refine tools to accelerate the use of its natural genetic diversity to advance crop improvement.

Scientists in this hub will be studying the genetic determinants on a single chromosome to create the HapCat (haplotypes catalogue) and to analyze the PanGenome i.e. the entire gene set of all strains of a species. The aim is to provide a common and scalable sequencing data analysis platform and a community focal point for researchers primarily generating sequencing data for utilizing genetic diversity in crop improvement programs.

The HapCat and PanGenome Hub will be led by Dr Rajeev K Varshney, ICRISAT, India, in collaboration with Dr Dave Edwards, The University of Western Australia, Australia and Dr Kuldeep Singh, Indian Council of Agricultural Research ICAR- National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, India.