Avinash Pandey

• PhD (Plant Genetic Resources)
• Senior Scientist at ICAR-IIAB

This study examined the genetic diversity in 20 rice landrace populations from parts of traditional farming areas of the Indian Himalayas using 11 mapped simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci. Twenty-four individuals sampled from each of the 20 landraces (480 individuals), which were collected from farmers from Northwest to Northeast Himalaya, showed...

Role of informal seed system in landrace diversification, in situ conservation on-farm and sustainability in production were investigated as a case study for rice diversity in Indian Himalayas. The diachronic pattern of landrace occurrence revealed substantial increase, both in landrace number and frequency, in time. The local level seed supply in...

Coix lacryma-jobi L. is a minor millet and an underutilized crop native to Asia that is of paramount importance in food and medicine. In India, the crop is mainly grown in the northeastern hill region for food, medicine, beverage, and fodder purposes. Genetic information on edible Job’s tears and wild relatives still needs improvement. Therefore, t...

Twenty two chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes were evaluated during rabi seasons of 2007-08 and 2008-09 to explore the possibility of introducing chickpea crop in to the cropping system of the mid-altitudes of Meghalaya. Luxuriant chickpea growth with a wide spectrum of variability for plant height, number of branches/plant, days to flowering,...

Forty soybean genotypes were evaluated for agro-morphological traits and genetic parameters. Correlation and path coefficients were estimated for all these traits. Analysis of variance and mean performance for yield and its components revealed significant differences among all the genotypes for all the characters. Correlation was also found signifi...

Background Teasel gourd is an important, indigenous, vegetatively propagated, high-value, underutilized cucurbit vegetable crop grown in South and Southeast Asia. Due to its wider adaptability, it is grown from plains to mid-hills. The crop is lacking in research, primarily related to the extent of genetic diversity in the region and crop improveme...

Global warming is causing increased temperatures that are affecting crop yield and sustainability. To harness the diversity present in rice germplasm, 1100 rice genotypes from the north-eastern Himalayan region (NEHR) were evaluated for high yield stability and marker-trait associations using SSR markers under ambient and elevated temperature condi...

Tuber crops are essential to the human diet, having desirable nutrients and health benefits. Root and tuber crops can provide essential nutrition and ensure nutritional security for low-income countries. Commercializing tuber crops can serve as a dietary intervention to address malnutrition and hidden hunger in underdeveloped countries. The most im...

To feed the ever-growing populations, crop productivity needs to produce more food. Under intensive agriculture, non-judicious use of chemicals is being applied, which leads to serious health concerns for humans, animals, and the environment. Natural or organic agriculture is an age-old farming practice that largely excludes chemical fertiliser, pe...

Northeastern states of India are known for unique landraces of Capsicum spp. with geographical indications. However, little information is available about these valuable landraces of chillies. Surveys and collections were carried out in niche areas to find out their ecology and diversity through morphological traits and molecular analysis using mic...

The study characterized 34 Job's tears accessions from the northeastern Himalayan region using yield-related traits and simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. Genotyping with 17 SSR markers revealed an average of 3.18 alleles per locus, varying from 2 to 4. Polymorphism information content values ranged from 0.27 to 0.52, averaging 0.41. Clustering...

Stone apple (Aegle marmelos L.) is a subtropical fruit tree of the Rutaceae family, highly valued in traditional medicine across the Indian subcontinent. We conceived this study with the objective of developing a comprehensive transcriptome dataset, identifying SSRs for marker-assisted breeding, and delineating regulators of gene expression, with a...

Nitrogen plays a crucial role in plant metabolism, growth, and development of plants, and its deficiency leads to severe growth retardation and reduced grain yield. The efficient utilization of nitrogenous fertilizers is needed to enhance crop yield and also to fetch the food demand of the world population. The accumulated nitrogen in the ecosystem...

Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus L.) is an underutilized legume of the family Fabaceae. We assembled 58,811 unigenes from the publicly available winged bean RNAseq data sets and discovered 4107 perfect SSRs. Seventy-eight of the 166 SSRs amplified into a single band, of which 22 were polymorphic in 79 germplasm accessions of winged bean con...

Assessing the genetic variability at molecular level gives a clear idea of plant genetic resource distribution and extent of diversity among and within the available population. In the present study, 120 ricebean (Vigna umbellate L.) genotypes collected from different states of Northeast (NE) regions of India. The genetic variability and population...

This volume is a compilation of reviews on the industrial usage of soil microorganisms. The contents include 15 brief reviews on different soil microbe assisted industrial processes. Readers will be updated about recent applications of soil bacteria, fungi and algae in sectors such as agriculture, biotechnology, environmental management. The review...

Jack (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a multipurpose fruit-tree species with minimal genomic resources. The study reports developing comprehensive transcriptome data containing 80,411 unigenes with an N50 value of 1265 bp. We predicted 64,215 CDSs from the unigenes and annotated and functionally categorized them into the biological process (23,230), m...

Fifty accessions of tomato, including related species were evaluated to study genetics for yield and quality attributes and diversity based on quantitative traits and molecular markers. The results have shown high heritability and genetic advance for the number of fruits per plant (96.14 and 193.5), fruit weight (87.61 and 96.70), yield per plant (...

Maize landraces collected from Mizoram state of North Eastern India were evaluated for three years (2017, 2018 and 2019) to assess the amount of variability present among the genotypes, association of traits and stability (parametric and non-parametric). MZM-44 was found to be a superior line with respect to yield and yield related traits. Least di...

Jack (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a multi-purpose out-breeding tree species of the family Moraceae. We generated 42,928,887 high-quality expressed sequence reads, assembled them into 89,356 unigenes, and discovered 16,853 unigene-based perfect SSRs in A. heterophyllus. Thirty-eight polymorphic SSRs were used to analyze the genetic diversity and po...

This study performed to determine the correlation, their comparison and path coefficients of yield and yield contributing characters by using F2 (BPT-5204 /IR-64Drt1) their two parents separately and the joint parental populations. In this study, the computations for testing the significance of the difference between the 15 traits of different popu...

The present investigation was carried out with F2 plants from a cross between two parents i.e., BPT-5204 and IR-64Drt1. The selection of parents for crosses was made based on genotypes that were tolerant and susceptible to drought condition. BPT-5204 was drought susceptible and IR-64Drt1 was also tolerant to drought. In this experiment adequate amo...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is an important solanaceous vegetable crop grown world-wide over tropics and subtropics. Bacterial wilt (caused by Ralstonia solanacearum) is one of the most serious diseases of the crop, especially in the humid tropics. The present investigation was carried out using 26 accessions of eggplant including wild relative...

Perilla is an important underutilized oilseed crop cultivated by tribal farmers in hilly areas of north-eastern region of India. It is grown by tribal and marginalised farmers in the traditional form of agriculture. The crop has good oil quality and plays an important role in providing nutritional security to the tribal farmers. There is a need to...

This study reports a comparison of differential physiological and biochemical changes in two Indian Mustard (Brassica juncea L.) cultivars viz. CS-52 (salinity tolerant) and Ashirwad (salinity susceptible) after 15 days of gradual increase in NaCl concentration in the nutrient solution. The increase in the NaCl concentration in the nutrient solutio...

Light intensity is a crucial environmental factor that affects photosynthesis and ultimately, grain yield in rice. However, no gene or marker directly associated with improved performance under low-light intensity under field conditions has been identified till date. With an aim of identifying genes and markers associated with improved performance...

One hundred and twenty germplasm of ricebean [Vigna umbellata (Thunb) Ohwi and Ohashi] were evaluated during 2015-16 and 2016-17 to study the yield related traits in ricebean in the mid-altitudes of Meghalaya. Luxuriant ricebean growth with a wide spectrum of variability for plant height, number of branches per plant, days to flowering, number of p...

Brassica and allied genera are valuable sources of edible oils, vegetables, condiments and other products. They also find utility for specific applications as renewable industrial or fuel oils. Wild and weedy species of these genera are precious genetic resources of agronomic and economic traits. Scientists have developed a large number of genomic...

The Indian sub-continent is home to a large number of indigenous aromatic landraces, which may serve as valuable genetic resources for future quality rice improvement to meet the ever growing demand for quality rice. In the era of high yielding modern varieties there is an urgent need to conserve and mainstream in production systems the valuable ar...

Chayote or chow–chow is an underutilized cucurbit vegetable crop, widely cultivated by farmers in the backyards and Jhum lands for its tender leaves, fruits and tuberous root. In order to initiate crop improvement program in this crop, the present study was undertaken to assess the genetic variations in the 74 chow–chow landraces collected from the...

Low light intensity stress is a critical abiotic stress that reduces rice yield and quality. Present study has been carried out with a set of hill rice germplasm under ambient light and low light condition. Results related to principal components analysis (PCA) revealed that grain yield, plant height and pollen viability are the most informative co...

Present experiment was carried out to determine the agronomic performances of thirty two rice genotypes across three locations in India (North East) in two consecutive years. The objective was to interpret genotype-environment (GE) interactions and determine stable genotypes by using Eberhart -Russell and Additive Main effect and Multiplicative Int...

Genetic variation is prerequisite for any crop improvement program as it helps in development of superior recombinants. Forty eight genotypes were evaluated for agronomic traits, yield and characters related to Al tolerance. The components of variability revealed high magnitude and highly heritable nature of the variations. High heritability with h...

Horticulture for Nutritional and Livlihood Security in NEH Region of India under the Scenario of Changing Climate

In the present study, genetic diversity among 73 genotypes comprising of cultivars and stable inter-specific derivatives from pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan x C. scarabaeoides) was assessed based on thirteen agro-morphological and quality traits and 42 genic microsatellite markers. Cluster analysis based on Tocher’s methods of pooled fielddata of agromor...

To evaluate the effect of different crop establishment methods and nutrient management practices in transplanted rice under hill ecosystem, a field experiment was conducted at Agricultural Research Farm of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Research Complex for North Eastern Hill Region, Jharnapani, Medziphema during kharif season of 2011 and...

Forty-two soybean genotypes were evaluated for their agro-morphological traits and the extent of genetic variability. Analysis of variance and mean performance for yield and its components revealed significant differences among all the genotypes for all the characters. Correlation was also found significant with yield and its component traits. The...

The present investigation was carried out to assess genetic diversity in 88 lentil genotypes and to identify desirable genotypes under low-input acidic upland soil conditions. Shoot weight, number of pods/plant number of primary branches showed highest association with yield. All the lentil genotypes were grouped into eight distinct clusters. The m...

Phosphorous is one of the most deficient nutrients owing to its fixation and low mobility in acid soils. A total of 324 genotypes were screened in both P sufficient and insufficient conditions to evaluate the P uptake efficiency. Thirty-four responsive genotypes were evaluated in solution culture with two checks viz., ICGV 86590 and JL 24. The comp...

Fifteen STMS primer pairs were used to study the intra- and inter-population diversity of four locally common red rice landrace populations of North-western Indian Himalayas, in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Two other local rice landraces were also included in the study for comparison. A total of 50 alleles, 48 common and 2 ra...

In the North Eastern Hill Region of India, the shifting or jhum cultivation is practiced in 16.79 lac ha area and rice bean is an essential part of jhum. Increasing the productivity of jhum is one of the important management options to uplift the economies of farmers. Identification / development of early maturing, high yielding rice bean genotypes...

The present investigation was carried out to assess genetic diversity in 88 lentil genotypes and to identify desirable genotypes under low-input acidic upland soil conditions. Shoot weight, number of pods/plant number of primary branches showed highest association with yield. All the lentil genotypes were grouped into eight distinct clusters. The m...

Thirty four pole type French bean genotypes were evaluated to assess their genetic variability to identify desirable ones for yield and quality traits. The genotypic variance was moderate to high for the all the 14 traits studied, which resulted in high heritability and moderate to high genetic advance values. Pod yield per plant was positively cor...

To evaluate the response to lime of cultivars of ricebean (Vigna umbellata), a field experiment was conducted during the two consecutive rabi seasons of 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 in the Nagaland foothills, India. The experiment used a split-plot design with four levels of lime (control, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 t ha–1) in main plots and four ricebean cultiva...

The objective of our study was to know the differences in expression of total protein, total phenol, peroxidase and polyphenoloxidase activities in self-defense in plant tissues against rice blast diseases. The activities of these compounds were studied in different genotypes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) Ngoba, Bhalum-1, Lampnah and IET 7614 with vary...

To identify superior crop genotypes through multi-environment trials data, the genotype main effect (G) and genotype by environment interaction (GE) biplot graphical tool was applied. Combined analysis of variance showed that the GE interaction effect accounted for 27.77% and 15.71% of total variation for grain yield and number of branches respecti...

In North Eastern (NE) region, Aluminium (Al) toxicity is a major problem due to acidic soils. Shifting (Jhum) cultivation of rice is a primitive mode of agriculture prevailing in the hills of the NE region.The present study was carried out to screen a set of 67 genotypes for agronomic traits, yield and characters related to Al tolerance. The compon...

The chilli (Capsicum sp.) germplasm found throughout North Eastern (NE) India exhibits wide variability in fruit morphology, pungency, bearing habit and crop duration. As the genetic resources of chilli landraces from this region are not well documented, it is likely that they have hitherto unknown alleles and/or genes for economically important tr...

The genetic variation available in wild and related species is a potential source for crop improvement. RIL population developed from a cross of Sesamum indicum and S. malabaricum consisting of 216 individuals along with the parental lines was evaluated for yield and other related traits. The traits considered were days to flowering, days to 50% fl...

Variations due to environmental adaptations among different populations of two locally common landraces Jaulia and Thapachini from niche environments of Uttarakhand Himalaya were studied. Wide variations for various agronomic traits like grain yield per plant, number of grains per panicle, grain length and width, etc. among different populations of...

Molecular characterization of green gram (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek) germplasm is essential for scientific assessment of variability and diversity for its better utilization in breeding programs. In this study, 120 accessions of green gram were analysed for 27 Sequence Tagged Microsatellites (STMS) loci. For data analysis, accessions were grouped...

Genetic structure of five populations of a locally common rice (Oryza sativa L.) landrace Jaulia from parts of Uttarakhand state of India was studied using sequence tagged microsatellite site (STMS) markers. Of these, four populations were on-farm managed, assembled from different niche environments, and one population was conserved ex situ and rep...