Mukesh Choudhary

University of Western Australia | UWA · School of Agriculture and Resource Economics

After rice and wheat, maize is the third most important cereal crop globally. It has diversified uses in the form of food, feed, fodder, fuel, and industrial raw materials. Maize has witnessed great success in terms of evolution and improvement and is the most explored crop for which most breeding strategies have been devised. Maize, being a cross-...

The fundamental aspects of crop breeding are the identification, investigation, creation and utilization of genetic variation. Attempts are made in classical breeding via forward genetics to detect the genetic architecture of a trait from its expression (phenotype). Following the discovery of DNA as a genetic material, a novel approach of reverse g...

Viral diseases substantially impact global maize production. Genetic resistance is the most feasible approach to combat losses caused by viral diseases. Various researchers have mapped several QTLs for viral disease resistance (VDR) in maize. The meta-QTL (MQTL) analysis is the best way to leverage such independent studies to find overlapping or co...

Background Maize is an excellent fodder crop due to its high biomass, better palatability, succulency, and nutrition. Studies on morpho-physiological and biochemical characterization of fodder maize are limited. The present study aimed to explore the genetic variation in fodder maize landraces for various morpho-physiological traits and estimation...

Plant diseases threaten global food security by reducing the production and quality of produce. Identification of disease resistance sources and their utilization in crop improvement is of paramount significance. However, constant evolution and occurrence of new, more aggressive and highly virulent pathotypes disintegrates the resistance of cultiva...

Maydis leaf blight (MLB) is a prevalent disease affecting maize worldwide, caused by the necrotrophic plant pathogen Bipolaris maydis (Nisikado and Miyake). Depending on environmental conditions, MLB can lead to yield losses of up to 40% or more. To combat this disease, various chemical and biocontrol/botanical agents have been developed and proven...

Maize is one of the important food crops after rice and wheat. It has good nutritive value in terms of starch, proteins, vitamins, and micronutrients which makes this crop important for industrial use. Many elite maize inbred lines and hybrids have already been developed which are having several combinations of nutritional quality traits, viz., qua...

The bibliometric analysis uses the citation count of an article to measure its impact on the scientific community, yet there is still no comprehensive summary of research undertaken on the nutrition aspects of maize crop via bibliometric analysis. We aimed to evaluate the situations and trends of the most cited articles in maize nutrition via bibli...

Background: Maize is an excellent fodder crop due to its high biomass, better palatability, succulency, and nutrition. Studies on morpho-physiological and biochemical characterization of fodder maize are limited. The present study aimed to explore the genetic variation in fodder maize landraces for various morpho-physiological traits and estimation...

Biotic stresses are major concerns for the world’s food security. These, commonly induced by diseases and/or insect pests, are one of the primary reasons for maize yield and quality losses. About 10% of the annual maize production is reduced because of biotic stresses globally. Diseases, particularly by fungal pathogens, lead to significant yield d...

Terminal heat stress is a major constraint for taking a profitable crop of wheat by small and marginal farmers in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains of south Asia. Hence, breeders remain in constant search for heat‐tolerant genotypes. This study was done with the purpose to find out high‐yielding wheat genotypes that perform stably under terminal heat stress...

Abiotic stresses are a potential threat to global food security commonly induced by moisture and temperature stresses, key reason for maize yield losses. Maize is the third most important global crop after rice and wheat; however, being rainfed crop often suffers from water stress (drought). The rising acreage under spring maize cultivation is high...

Soybean is one of the largest sources of protein and oil in the world and is also considered a “super crop” due to several industrial advantages. However, enhanced acreage and adoption of monoculture practices rendered the crop vulnerable to several diseases. Phytophthora root and stem rot (PRSR) caused by Phytophthora sojae is one of the most prev...

Aim: Methodology: Results: Interpretation: The study aimed to evaluate ten wheat cultivars along with 45 F under different environments to identify best suited environment for potential 1 expression of grain yield and related traits under terminal heat stress. Ten wheat cultivars and 45 F were evaluated under three 1 different environments at Rajas...

The development of resistant maize cultivars is the most effective and sustainable approach to combat fungal diseases. Over the last three decades, many quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping studies reported numerous QTL for fungal disease resistance (FDR) in maize. However, different genetic backgrounds of germplasm and differing QTL analysis algo...

Maize is a global principal crop, after wheat and rice. Maydis leaf blight (MLB), also known as Southern Corn Leaf Blight (SCLB), caused by Cochliobolus heterostrophus is a massive foliar disease in maize of fungal origin and prevalent in warm (20–30 °C), humid (>80%) temperate to tropical regions of the world. It has noted signification in the agr...

Conventional agricultural practices rely heavily on chemical fertilizers to boost production. Among the fertilizers, phosphatic fertilizers are copiously used to ameliorate low-phosphate availability in the soil. However, phosphorus-use efficiency (PUE) for major cereals, including maize, is less than 30%; resulting in more than half of the applied...

Wheat is an important staple cereal for global food security. However, climate change is hampering wheat production due to abiotic stresses, such as heat, salinity, and drought. Besides shoot architectural traits, improving root system architecture (RSA) traits have the potential to improve yields under normal and stressed environments. RSA growth...

Background: This study was taken up to assess the effect of time of sowing and number of irrigations on the yield of maize cultivar J-1006 and to see their impact on the nutritive value of fresh and ensiled fodder. Methods: Maize cultivar J-1006 was sown at 50 cm row to row and 10 cm plant to plant spacing at 10 days interval in quintuplicate. The...

The present study involved estimating the combining ability effects and heterotic grouping to increase the efficacy of parental selection for successful hybrid development. A total of 52 F 1 hybrids were generated by Line × Tester mating design by crossing 26 diverse maize inbred lines with two testers, namely, HKI 323 and HKI 1105. The 26 baby cor...

Meiosis is the least explored stage for thermotolerance in wheat. We evaluated the impact of 5 d of moderate transient daily heat stress during meiosis in the main stem spike on physiological and grain yield traits in 30 diverse wheat cultivars which vary widely in heat tolerance and sensitivity. We found that a moderate heat stress event during me...

Citation: Kumar, B.; Choudhary, M.; Kumar, P.; Kumar, K.; Kumar, S.; Singh, B.K.; Lahkar, C.; M.; Kumar, P.; Dar, Z.A.; et al. Population Structure

Advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics tools have fueled a renewed interest in whole genome sequencing efforts in many organisms. The growing availability of multiple genome sequences has advanced our understanding of the within-species diversity, in the form of a pangenome. Pangenomics has opened new avenues for future research suc...

Several maize breeding programs in India have developed numerous inbred lines but the lines have not been characterized using high-density molecular markers. Here, we studied the molecular diversity, population structure, and linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns in a panel of 314 tropical normal corn, two sweet corn, and six popcorn inbred lines de...

Key message Improving crop resistance against insect pests is crucial for ensuring future food security. Integrating genomics with modern breeding methods holds enormous potential in dissecting the genetic architecture of this complex trait and accelerating crop improvement. Abstract Insect resistance in crops has been a major research objective i...

In agro-ecosystem, plant pathogens hamper food quality, crop yield, and global food security. Manipulation of naturally occurring defense mechanisms in host plants is an effective and sustainable approach for plant disease management. Various natural compounds, ranging from cell wall components to metabolic enzymes have been reported to protect pla...

Heat stress (HS) is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting the production and quality of wheat. Rising temperatures are particularly threatening to wheat production. A detailed overview of morpho-physio-biochemical responses of wheat to HS is critical to identify various tolerance mechanisms and their use in identifying strategies to safeguard...

Salinity stress adversely affects plant growth and causes considerable losses in cereal crops. Salinity stress tolerance is a complex phenomenon, imparted by the interaction of compounds involved in various biochemical and physiological processes. Conventional breeding for salt stress tolerance has had limited success. However, the availability of...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the third most important staple crop after rice and wheat with enormous diversity and adaptation ability. Hybrid breeding is the most important approach for developing high yielding cultivars in maize. It relies upon the generation of pure inbred lines with desirable traits in quick span to achieve higher genetic gains. Rapid...

Heat stress events during flowering in Brassica crops reduce grain yield and are expected to increase in frequency due to global climate change. We evaluated heat stress tolerance and molecular genetic diversity in a global collection of Brassica rapa accessions, including leafy, rooty and oilseed morphotypes with spring, winter and semi-winter flo...

The accelerated release of heavy metals into the coastal environments due to increasing anthropogenic activities poses a severe threat to local marine ecosystems and food chains. Although some heavy metals are essential nutrients for plants and animals, higher concentrations can be toxic and hazardous. To mitigate this threat, developing quantifiab...

Cereals are primary staple food for human and are easily available to all households. Biofortification of cereals holds prime significance for deprived sections mainly dependent on cereal diet for their calorie requirement due to economic, social or policy constraints. Recent omics-based breeding strategies offer great opportunities for breeders by...

ICAR-Indian Institute of Maize Research, Ludhiana has developed and released its six high yielding hybrids, viz. three QPM, two popcorns and one baby corn through CVRC for cultivation in different ecologies.

Nitrogen, the vital primary plant growth nutrient at deficit soil conditions, drastically affects the growth and yield of a crop. Over the years, excess use of inorganic nitrogenous fertilizers resulted in pollution, eutrophication and thereby demanding the reduction in the use of chemical fertilizers. Being a C4 plant with fibrous root system and...

Micronutrient deficiencies, particularly iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), in human diets are affecting over three billion people globally, especially in developing nations where diet is cereal-based. Wheat is one of several important cereal crops that provide food calories to nearly one-third of the population of the world. However, the bioavailability of...

Pooled analysis of the test-crosses evaluation of 61 newly developed maize (Zea mays L.) inbred lines using two inbred testers namely BML-6 and BML-7 during rabi 2016-17 and 2017-18 at ICAR-IIMR Regional Centre, Begusarai revealed significant variation among genotypes, general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) effects for...

The present study was conducted on genetic diversity analyses among 24 pea genotypes during 2017–2018 to assess the molecular diversity of pea genotypes using SSR markers. Out of 62, eleven markers were found to be polymorphic and the polymorphic information content (PIC) of the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers ranged from 0.19 to as high as 0....

High-throughput genotyping has become more convenient and cost-effective due to recent advancements in next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques. Numerous approaches exploring sequencing advances for genotyping have been developed over the past decade, which includes different variants of genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), and restriction-site assoc...

The rising demand for popcorn necessitates improving the popping quality with higher yield of popcorn cultivars. Towards this direction several Quantitative Traits Loci (QTLs) for popping traits have been identified. However, identification of accurate and consistent QTLs across different genetic backgrounds and environments is necessary to effecti...

This book contains 29 chapters focusing on wheat, maize and sorghum molecular breeding. It aims to contribute the latest understandings of the molecular and genetic bases of abiotic stress tolerance, yield and quality improvement of wheat, maize and sorghum to develop strategies for improving abiotic stress tolerance that will lead to enhance produ...

Heterosis has been widely exploited in plants and animals, and also revolutionized agriculture by improving important agronomic traits. However, the molecular mechanism is still remaining elusive. Though different classical models, viz., dominance, overdominance and epistasis still holds true, the recent studies on epigenomics, transcriptomic, prot...

Due to the after-effects of human anthropogenic activities and parallel changes in weather, adverse environmental conditions are progressively prevailing across the globe. As a result, there is a disadvantageous influence on all sessile plants and their related characteristics such as growth, development, chance to survive and ultimately reproduce....

Yellow maize is natural source of provitamin A components. However, the provitamin A carotenoids are known to degrade fast as a result of oxidation and isomerization due to exposure to heat and oxygen during storage. Keeping this in view, here, we evaluated the provitamin A carotenoids in maize stored under different storage conditions. For this pu...

Low‐moisture stress, also referred to as drought, is one of the major factors that negatively impact the agricultural yield. The present scenario of climate change is expected to aggravate it further. Considering the extended time required to develop resistant crops, it is important to prioritize research efforts for coping with low moisture, preva...

In the past few decades course, the global human population has grown tremendously and reached 7.712 billion counts by 2019. It is expected to cross the whopping mark of 10 billion by 2053. This every second escalating growth has also directly increased the application of human-made fertilizers, the intensity of agricultural practices, and much wid...

Maize or corn (Zea mays L.), which was first domesticated in Mexico, is the most widely grown cereal crop in the world. Maize is consumed as feed and food, and also has myriads industrial applications, including the production of bioethanol and starch. Due to its highest genetic potential, production and productivity among the cereal crops, maize i...

The success of any pearl millet hybrid programme depends upon the assessment of the structure of parental diversity. In this investigation, polymorphism data generated using 42 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and 12 agromorphological traits were used for genetic diversity assessment among 32 genotypes (29 restorers and 3 maintainers) of pearl...

Certified seed: Importance

Maize (Zea mays L.) has diversified uses in the form of food, feed and fodder. In India green fodder deficit of 61.1 % has been reported. Under this scenario, maize and its wild relatives with its wide adaptability have enormous potential to serve as nutritious fodder. The annual teosinte, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, the closest ancestor of modern m...

The success of any pearl millet hybrid programme depends upon the assessment of the structure of parental diversity. In this investigation, polymorphism data generated using 42 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and 12 agro- morphological traits were used for genetic diversity assessment among 32 genotypes (29 restorers and 3 maintainers) of pear...

Climate change impacts agriculture in numerous ways including rising average temperatures, rainfall, changes in pests and diseases, rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, ozone concentrations at ground level and changes in the nutritional quality of certain foods. Therefore, achieving global food security for rising global population under limited ara...

Drought is one of the foremost threats for global cereal crop production with looming risks due to changing climatic scenarios. Among major cereals, rice wheat and maize are commonly grown worldwide for their importance as staple food as well as significance in fulfilling the nutritional requirements among the escalating human population. Drought b...

The multi-location testing puts emphasizes mainly on identification of new superior cultivars over commercial cultivars, while giving very less importance to genotype × environment interaction (GEI). In the present study, performances of 37 baby corn cross combinations (including three checks) were evaluated for green ear yield, baby corn yield and...

About the importance of wild relatives in maize improvement

The lockdown has changed the lifestyle of billions of people in the earth. The way of education has now become more online and gadget centric. Hundreds of digital education tools have been created/explored with the purpose of giving autonomy to the student, improving the administration of academic processes, encouraging collaboration, and facilitat...

Genetic engineering and plant transformation have played a pivotal role in crop improvement via introducing beneficial foreign gene(s) or silencing the expression of endogenous gene(s) in crop plants. Genetically modified crops possess one or more useful traits, such as, herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, disease resi...

Genotype (G) × environment (E) interaction is very important for the evaluation of cultivars in breeding programmes. Present study was conducted to assess the effect of environment and yield stability of 68 quality protein maize (QPM) hybrids at three test environments [Begusarai (E1), Udaipur (E2) and Karim Nagar (E3)] in randomized block design (...

Better agronomic and management practices for maize production in UP

Fodder maize and Silage Production

A set of 48 rice genotypes were evaluated to assess the magnitude of genetic diversity under irrigated (control) and reproductive stage drought stress conditions during Kharif, 2018 at Rice Research Farm, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour (Bhagalpur), India. On the basis of D 2 statistics, all the genotypes were grouped into nineteen clusters i...

Baby corn cultivation in peri-urban areas offers an excellent opportunity to augment the farmer’s income. Baby corn has the immense potential to fetch foreign currency because of its huge demand in international market owing to its good taste, nutritive values, being free from pesticide residues and its utilization in preparation of food products....

The rising demand for popcorn invited scientists to seek ways to increase its popping quality with a higher yield of popcorn cultivars. Towards this direction identification of accurate and consistent QTLs across different genetic backgrounds and environments is necessary for effective use in marker-assisted selection. Several studies have identifi...

Maize is known as queen of cereals because it has the highest genetic yield potential among the cereals. Among different maize based cropping systems, maize-wheat ranks 1st having 1.8 m ha area mainly concentrated in rainfed ecologies and is the 3rd most important cropping systems in India. The other major maize systems in India are maize-mustard,...

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