Unclasping potential chickpea resources for the antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe investigation was conducted to assess the diverseness and identify novel resources to be utilized in chickpea abiotic‐biotic stress resistance breeding for the antioxidant enzyme Superoxide Dismutase. The plants were grown in a randomized block design in triplicates under all suitable agronomic practices using PUSA 256 as a check. Fresh leaves were collected for the estimation of enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) and DNA extraction. Number of pods were recorded on 20 individual plants from the middle of the row for each of the 12 genotypes. Employing 32 Sequence Tagged Microsatellite Site (STMS) markers together with morpho‐biochemical data, Jaccard's similarity coefficients along with dendrograms were generated to compare and assess the diversity among the genotypes.ResultsAmong the 12 chickpea genotypes, poorest versus best performers were identified as BGD‐70 versus ICRISAT‐3668 for SOD activity. Out of 32 STMS primers, 80 alleles with 2.5 an average per loci were found. The marker TA‐80 with the highest polymorphic information content (PIC) could be identified to be used in molecular characterization. The meticulous perusal revealed that the genotypes ICRISAT‐3668 and SBD 377, distantly located on different molecular clusters, expressed the higher SOD activity with the observed distances indicating genetic governance, probably by a limited number of polygenes/OTLs and might be utilized as a potential source for the SOD activity for chickpea abiotic‐biotic stress resistance breeding programs.ConclusionThe identified novel genetic resources may be used to widen the germplasm base, prepare a maintainable catalog and identify systematic blueprints for future chickpea abiotic‐biotic stresses breeding strategies.