Indo-Australia genomics project for chickpea drought tolerance gains momentum

India and Australia have joined hands in a multi-institutional project to enhance drought tolerance in chickpea. The project, ‘Functional Genomics of Chickpea to enhance drought tolerance’, will see The University of Western Australia (UWA), ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and ICRISAT leverage their expertise in genomics.

Under the project, ICRISAT will undertake genome sequencing, setting up of drought tolerance experiments and phenotyping analysis as well as transcriptomics work. UWA is set to perform physiological analysis, proteomics and metabolomics analysis. Experiments on breeding cycles and yield trials will be conducted by IARI while JNU will analyze samples for metabolomics differences.