Legume Genetics and Genomics: Recent Advances

Abstract

Legumes are the major source for providing worldwide human food, animal feed and forage. They constitute one of the major plant groups that provide key components including proteins in the diets of resource-poor people in the world including semi-arid tropic regions. Grain legumes accounts for 27 % of the world’s primary crop production and 33 % of the dietary proteins [1]. In addition, grain legumes may be used to make bread, doughnuts, chips, snacks etc. [2]. Consumption of legumes in diet complements the nutritional profiles of cereals and tubers [1]. Some of these legumes have been used as medicine. For instance, Isoflavones from soybean and other legumes have been used to lower risk of cancer and lower serum cholesterol level [2] and thereby helps to improve overall health of human beings. Besides, legumes also sometimes serve as model crop plants for the improvement of other crops. In order to discuss the advances made in the area of legume biology the VI international conference on Legume Genetics and Genomics (ICLGG) was organized in Hyderabad, India during October 2–7, 2012. With more than 500 participants from 44 countries, it emerged as the biggest ICLGG conferences so far. It was 6th meeting in the series of ICLGG that were held earlier in USA (I & V), France (II), Australia (III) and Mexico (IV). The conference had 10 themes covered in 11 sessions with theme symbiosis and development split in two sessions. The other themes included: (i) Next Generation Genomics, (ii) Evolution and Diversity, (iii) Harnessing Germplasm Resources, (iv) Abiotic Stress, (v) Pathogenesis and Disease Resistance, (vi) Genomic Resources and Trait Mapping, (vii) Genomics-Assisted Breeding, (viii) Nutrition and Quality and (ix) Translational Genomics. All these sessions covered the entire aspects of legume genetics and genomics. In addition, a special session on ‘‘Young Scientists in Legume Genetics and Genomics’’ had presentations from eight young scientists representing range of legume crops, disciplines and countries. The details of conference program are available at http://www.icrisat.org/gt-bt/VI-ICLGG/Homepage.htm. During the conference, a total of 63 presentations were made with 57 % of them selected from the abstracts submitted by the participants, while the remaining abstracts were presented in the poster sessions. Huge amount of information has now been generated on various aspects of legumes crops and most of this was presented during this conference. However, only the summary of some selected talks is presented in this report. The innovativeness which was observed during the conference was that each poster presenter was given 1 min to talk about his/her poster before all the participants and the best performers in each theme were given awards during the closing ceremony of the conference. Several workshops were also organised before the start of actual conference on October 2, 2012, which included workshop on mungbean, the peanut genome project, small RNAs and peptides, and FabaTropiMed (an integrated project on the ecological services of legumes that is carried out through a cooperative research in six agro-ecosystems of Africa under Mediterranean or tropical climate), while R. R. Mir (&) Division of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Shere-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Jammu (SKUAST-J), Chatha, Jammu 180009, J&K, India e-mail: imrouf2006@gmail.com