Conventional, genomics, and post-genomics era of pulses breeding: Current status and future prospects

Among food grains, pulses are the main sources of proteins, minerals and vitamins for a large section of the population. They play an important role in global food security through providing nutritious food, animal feed, source of income and various employment opportunities. Pulses are mainly cultivated by small and marginal farmers with poor resources and minimal inputs under rainfed conditions. In addition, through traditional breeding, just a few pulses genotypes have been recurrently used as parents in breeding programs for the production of new cultivars, hence, they have narrowed down their genetic base and not gained full potential of production. Therefore, to increase the speed of genetic gain in pulses, novel genomics and post-genomics tools have been extensively utilised by the plant breeders in integration with the new breeding strategies like marker-assisted selection (MAS), marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS), speed breeding, genome editing tools, and high-throughput phenotyping around the world.