Strategizing Pigeonpea for Enhancing Health-Benefitting Traits: A Path to Nutritional Advancements

Abstract

Nutritional security is the key objective of India's 2030 Vision and UN Sustainable Development Goal 3. Although the world has made progress towards food security, there is still work to be done in assuring nutrition for all. While millions of people worldwide suffer from protein energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, providing nutrient-rich foods offers a long-term solution. Pigeonpea is a major daily diet of developing and undeveloped nations covering Asian and African households and increasing its protein and micronutrient (iron and zinc content) is a feasible approach. Thus, this review focusses on strategizing how pigeonpea could provide nutritional assurance in the coming decade. It primarily summarizes the dietary profile, health advantages, and anti-nutritional factors that hinder pigeonpea. Furthermore, it delineates the current progress through conventional breeding and molecular tools, while providing strategies to amalgamate advances in transgenics, omics and rapid generation advancement platforms to enhance health-benefitting traits and tackling the anti-nutritional factors contributing potentially towards the nutritional security.