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Agricultural and food biotechnology
Biotechnology on the farm and in the fish pond: genetically modified and genome edited crops and their regulation, crop and animal genomes, breeding technologies, fish farming systems and food grown from cells. Prelims has asked how genome sequencing can be used in Indian agriculture and about biofilters in recirculating aquaculture.
Showing 1 of 4 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 August 2026.Show all
Pigeonpea telomere-to-telomere genome
Copy link to Pigeonpea telomere-to-telomere genomePrelims
Pigeonpea is the pulse sold as arhar or tur. A draft genome stops at the repetitive stretches that sequencing cannot assemble, which is where the centromeres and the telomeres sit. Closing those stretches is the whole difference between this assembly and the draft that came before it. A genome read from one chromosome end to the other is what lets a trait be placed on a chromosome, and a breeder then go after it.
- The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) released India's first telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genome, of the pigeonpea variety 'Asha', and deposited it at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).
- The gapless sequence is now the global reference genome for the crop.
- The same institute produced the world's first draft genome of a pulse crop, also pigeonpea, in 2011.
- Molecular breeding and genome editing both need the precision a gapless assembly gives, and in pulses they serve the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, the national effort to make India self-reliant in pulses.
752.65 millionbase pairs in the genome
11chromosomes, with their centromeres
22telomeres, the chromosome ends
36,557genes annotated
What changed
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2017: how genome sequencing can be used in Indian agriculture
Also filed elsewhere
- Mutation breeding · on Fusion, radiation applications and nuclear governance
Mutation breeding exposes seeds to radiation to create changes within the crop's own genome, and the breeder then selects the plants worth keeping.