Fundamentals of Legume Breeding A Text for Students and Practitioners

Many advances have been made in plant breeding during the last few decades, which has added an altogether new dimension to legume breeding. This book explains theoretical as well as latest advances in plant-breeding practices, tools and techniques, including developments in genomics. It describes crop origin, reproduction, biology, genetic principles, and other developments applicable in plant-breeding. It also covers descriptions of well-established and novel plant-breeding techniques, and discussions on crop-specific, plant-breeding objectives with emphasis on market-oriented variety development. The chapters describe focused breeding procedures for the major legumes as per their economic importance. This book provides knowledge of modern breeding tools for developing climate-resilient and micronutrient-rich varieties of different pulse crops. The chapters also describe both conventional and non-conventional breeding approaches adopted by the plant breeders for each crop.

This book serves as a reference for the post-graduate, plant-breeding students as well as plant breeders.

Chapter 1. Global research status of grain legumes.- Chapter 2. Common Bean Breeding.- Chapter 3. Chickpea Breeding.- Chapter 4. Pigeonpea Breeding.- Chapter 5. Mungbean Breeding.- Chapter 6. Urdbean Breeding.- Chapter 7. Lentil breeding.- Chapter 8. Field pea Breeding.- Chapter 9. Lathyrus breeding.- Chapter 10. Cowpea Breeding.- Chapter 11. Arid Legumes Breeding.- Chapter 12. Underutilized Grain Legume Breeding.- Chapter 13. Soybean Breeding.- Chapter 14. New Breeding Tools for Grain Legumes.- Chapter 15. Nutritional quality enhancement in legumes.- Chapter 16. Quality Seed Production in Legumes.

Dr. G.P. Dixit is the Director of the ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur. He had served as Project Coordinator of AICRP on Chickpea, AICRP on MULLaRP and AICRP on Linseed for more than 12 years. He has more than three decades of experience in pulses research and development, and has more than 24 varieties of different pulses including field pea, chickpea and urdbean to his credit.

Dr. Harsh Kumar Dikshit is a Principal Scientist working at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi. He obtained his doctorate on plant breeding and pathology from G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Uttarakhand. 

Dr. G. P. Mishra is working as a Senior Scientist at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA, New Delhi. He has obtained his PhD and Masters in Genetics from ICAR-IARI and his Bachelor's in Agriculture from Banaras Hindu University. 

Dr. Muraleedhar S Aski  is a Senior Scientist (Lentil and Mungbean Breeding) at the Division of Genetics, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, India. He initially served as a Chickpea Breeder for ICAR-IIPR Kanpur (India).