Population Genetics Of Chickpea And Its Wild Progenitors C

Population genetics of chickpea and its wild progenitors C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum Susan Moenga Introduction Chickpea, Cicer arietinum, is the second most widely grown legume in the world, cultivated on ~11.5 million ha mostly in India and Ethiopia (FAOSTAT, 2013). Genetic and molecular evidence have demonstrated that C. reticulatum is the progenitor of the cultivated pulse, with Nguyen et al., (2004) and Sethy et al., (2006) both supporting C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum (both restricted to Southeastern Turkey) to be the primary and secondary gene pools for the cultivated species respectively. However, apart from the estimated domestication time of 5,700 BP, very little else is known of the genetic diversity of these species as well as the genetic impact of the domestication process. Such information would lay ground for further research into these species, allowing for genome wide association mapping into locally adaptive traits in wild species that could be of agronomic importance. Hypotheses and research questions Cultivated chickpea will have lower levels of nucleotide diversity relative to its wild progenitors. Such a reduction is attributed to a ‘domestication bottleneck’, where only a small subset of individuals with desirable traits is chosen for cultivation. Additionally, there will be reduction in diversity attributed to selective breeding that has over time targeted anthropocentric traits succeeding domestication, that will be visible in select