Genetic resources from north eastern region of India and their role in improvement of vegetable crops

Abstract

The North eastern India is considered as one of the most biodiversity-rich domains of the world. This region is the geographic gateway for much of India’s floras and faunas, identified as Indo-Burma hotspot and harbour valuable genetic resources for crop improvement including vegetables. The North east India shares only 7.7% of India’s total geographical area but hosting 50% of the flowering plants in the Indian sub-continent (about 8000 species), of which 2526 species are endemic. Plant genetic resources, being the foundation of agriculture and particularly, landraces and CWRs that is safeguarded in their wild natural habitats harbours wide range of traits for adaptation to abiotic and biotic stresses and quality traits that may contribute to the adaptation of global agriculture to climate change and food security. Therefore, this region has attracted plant breeders and researchers to explore and utilize the available crop diversity for the genetic improvement of different crop plants including various vegetable crops. This region is home to various vegetables crops belonging to family- solanaceae, cucurbitaceae and leguminaceae which are of paramount importance for future crop improvement programme. Enormous variability in vegetables such as tomato, brinjal, chillies, beans, leafy, rhizomatous, tubers and bulbous crops and various kinds of cucurbits are available in this region but very few of them have been utilized. This region has not been explored up to expectations and holds prime potential for new plant genotype and trait discoveries in many vegetable crops.