Breeding pigeonpea for seed yield and nutritional quality

Pigeonpea has been identified as a potential food and feed crop for southern USA. However, there is a complete lack of breeding to improve this legume crop. The National Plant Germplasm System of USDA does not contain any pigeonpea accessions. Proposed effort will evaluate extensive pigeonpea germplasm, consisting of a collection of about 200 lines available with the New Crops Program of Virginia State University, to lay the foundation for development of high-yielding pigeonpea lines. A three prong strategy will be used to identify high yielding lines: selections from open-pollinated populations; characterization of pigeonpea lines for yield and nutritional quality to see if some lines have desirable seed yield and nutritional quality; and hybridization between selected lines to select desirable segregants in future segregating generations. Evaluations related to nutritional quality will lay a foundation for development of pigeonpea cultivars with enhanced concentrations of protein, iron and zinc via biofortification.