SCIENTISTS FROM the National University of Ireland Galway have helped unravel the genetic code of an important food crop in developing countries – the pigeonpea genome.
Having this knowledge could help improve yields or drought resistance in this staple food that feeds some of the world’s poorest people.
“Pigeonpea is a staple food crop of millions of poorer smallholder farmers in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Prof Charles Spillane, the head of botany and plant science at NUIG. Despite its importance to subsistence farming it represented an “orphan crop”, one that did not attract the attention of companies due to the lack of commercial incentives, he said.
This study, published this morning in leading journal Nature Biotechnology, changes all of that.
It took a global research effort by a partnership called Icrisat (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics). NUIG has an alliance with the institute.
Pigeonpea is an orphan no more because of this accomplishment, Prof Spillane said. It opens up the way towards better understanding this crop. “The mapping of the pigeonpea genome is a breakthrough that could not have come at a better time,” said Icrisat director general William Dar, who visited NUIG earlier this year.
“Modern crop improvement technologies for smallholder farmer crops such as pigeonpea will be crucial to speed up the development of improved varieties that can provide high yields and improved livelihoods,” he said.
The plant is grown on about five million hectares in its key growing areas and is known as the “poor people’s meat” because of its high protein content, according to the institute.
Prof Spillane joined with Dr Mark Donoghue and PhD student Reetu Tuteja to make the Irish contribution in NUIG’s plant and agribiosciences centre.
Galway works closely with Icrisat and with other research partners, Prof Spillane said.