Genomic Approaches to Abiotic Stresses in Mungbean

Mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek var. radiata) is an important legume crop widely produced and consumed throughout Southeast Asia, cultivated on more than 6 million hectares worldwide. Minimizing the impact climate variability has on production is vital to smallholder farmers rely on mungbeans as a source of income and nutrition Abiotic stress factors such as drought, water availability, heat and salinity pose a major risk to global food security. Variability in the climate and the increasing demand for food crops means innovative approaches must be implemented now to secure the food of tomorrow. Conventional breeding programs lead by the World Vegetable Centre and the Australian National Mungbean Improvement Program have dramatically increased the yields, reliability and sustainability of mungbean crops worldwide. Breeders and researchers are building on that foundational work through the implementation of genomic technologies. Sequencing the genomes of large diverse sets of mungbean germplasm aims to quantify how the genetic diversity present among the world’s mungbean collections and to identify genes associated with agronomically important traits. By combining sequence and phenotyping data regions of the genome associated with important traits link to, the maintenance of photosynthetic pathways and water-use efficiency can be targeted. Once identified, those pathways can be directly manipulated using genome-editing tools reduce current breeding times by more than half. Although abiotic stressors pose an immediate and extensive risk, fortunately the technologies and researchers needed to address the issues exist today.