Sorghum is one of the most important food and feed cereal crops and has been gaining industrial importance in recent years for its biofuel, nutraceutical and antioxidant values. A genetic profile variation study was undertaken for the accumulation of phytochemicals in 61 diverse sorghum accessions differing in their growth habitat and grain color through non-targeted Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) analysis. Mass Spectrometry–Data Independent AnaLysis (MS-DIAL) and MetaboAnalyst identified 221 metabolites belonging to 27 different phytochemicals. Tropical and temperate sorghums were distinct in their metabolic profiles with minimum overlaps, and 51 different metabolites were crucial in differentiating the two groups. Temperate sorghums had the ability to accumulate more of phenolic acids, phytosterols, flavonoids, carotenoids, and tropical sorghums for stress-related amino acids, sugars and fatty acids. Grain-color-based Partial Least Square–Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) analysis identified 94 Variable Importance in Projections (VIP) metabolites containing majority of flavonoids, phenylpropanoids and phytosterols. This study identified two sorghum lines (IS 7748 and IS 14861) with rich amounts of antioxidants (catechins and epicatechins) belonging to the group of condensed tannins that otherwise do not accumulate commonly in sorghum. Out of 13 metabolic pathways identified, flavonoid biosynthesis showed the highest expression. This study provided new opportunities for developing biofortified sorghum with enhanced nutraceutical and therapeutics through molecular breeding and metabolic engineering.

Stomata regulates conductance, transpiration and photosynthetic traits in plants. Increased stomatal density may contribute to enhanced water loss and thereby help improve the transpirational cooling process and mitigate the high temperature-induced yield losses. However, genetic manipulation of stomatal traits through conventional breeding still remains a challenge due to problems involved in phenotyping and the lack of suitable genetic materials. Recent advances in functional genomics in rice identified major effect genes determining stomatal traits, including its number and size. Widespread applications of CRISPR/Cas9 in creating targeted mutations paved the way for fine tuning the stomatal traits for enhancing climate resilience in crops. In the current study, attempts were made to create novel alleles of OsEPF1 (Epidermal Patterning Factor), a negative regulator of stomatal frequency/density in a popular rice variety, ASD 16, using the CRISPR/Cas9 approach. Evaluation of 17 T₀ progenies identified varying mutations (seven multiallelic, seven biallelic and three monoallelic mutations). T₀ mutant lines showed a 3.7–44.3% increase in the stomatal density, and all the mutations were successfully inherited into the T₁ generation. Evaluation of T₁ progenies through sequencing identified three homozygous mutants for one bp insertion. Overall, T₁ plants showed 54–95% increased stomatal density. The homozygous T₁ lines (# E1-1-4, # E1-1-9 and # E1-1-11) showed significant increase in the stomatal conductance (60–65%), photosynthetic rate (14–31%) and the transpiration rate (58–62%) compared to the nontransgenic ASD 16. Results demonstrated that the genetic alterations in OsEPF1 altered the stomatal density, stomatal conductance and photosynthetic efficiency in rice. Further experiments are needed to associate this technology with canopy cooling and high temperature tolerance.

Limited genomic resources, especially on breeder-friendly simple sequence repeats (SSR), are available in Moringa, a multi-purpose miracle tree. This study predicted a total of 29913 genomic-SSRs and 1364 genic-SSRs from the omics data obtained from a Moringa cultivar, PKM1. Among the genomic SSR motifs, 1, 414, 2183, 25600, 1106 and 609 SSRs were Mono, Di, Tri, Tetra, Penta, and Hexa repeats, respectively. Higher frequency for AGAG (24.01%) followed by GAGA (16.68) and AAAA (13.18%) was observed in genic-SSRs sequences. Primer pairs for 22,336 genomic- and genic-SSR markers were developed and 117 SSR primer pairs were randomly selected and assayed in four representative Moringa cultivars and ecotypes. Consequently, 94.44% of them have showed high level of DNA polymorphism by generating 1 to 4 alleles per SSR marker (with an average of 1.75) among the investigated Moringa accessions with a maximum polymorphic information content (PIC) of 0.95. Besides using as simple and affordable indicator to differentiate morphologically similar Moringa ecotypes, the SSRs reported in this study will also have several other potential applications such as seed purity analysis, intellectual property protection, identification of introgressions in interspecific crosses, evolutionary studies, germplasm management, gene and/or QTL identification and marker-assisted selection.

This study was conducted to develop a variety suitable for high leaf production in moringa. Initially, seeds of PKM 1 variety of moringa were treated with gamma irradiation of 100 Gy (Gray), 200 Gy and 300 Gy at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai and raised as M1 generation. The best-performing mutants were selected and forwarded to further generations (M1 to M4) based on leaf-related characters. A total of 10 Indian drumsticks (Moringa oleifera Lam.) mutants (derived from 200 Gy of gamma irradiation) from M4 generation with PKM 1 variety were evaluated for morphological and molecular diversity. To evaluate morphological diversity, 4 features (leaf length, leaf breadth, fresh weight and dry weight) were studied under field conditions. Ten sets of markers for simple sequence repeats (SSR), i.e. GenicSSR1081, SSR25987, SSR2927, GenicSSR859, GenicSSR796, SSR6561, GenicSSR890, GenicSSR1204, GenicSSR983 and GenicSSR778; that generated distinct and repeatable bands; were chosen for analyzing molecular diversity. A total of 24 bands were amplified, of which 17 were polymorphic. With an average of 0.391, the polymorphic information content (PIC) values for SSR markers varied from 0.124 for marker SSR2927 to 0.719 for marker GenicSSR778. Based on the cluster analysis with SSR markers, the mutants are divided into 2 groups. The variety PKM 1 was separated by a group whereas; all the other mutants fell into a single group indicating the diversity of mutants from the control. The diverse mutants (15-1-09-70 and 15-1-09-53) based on both morphological and molecular observations were selected and suggested for evaluation through subsequent generations that have the potential to be released as a variety for high leaf production. By increasing the production of highly nutritious moringa leaf, self-sufficiency and nutritional security can be obtained as well as it could benefit the lifestyle improvement of farmers through export to countries where the crop demand is high.

This genome-wide association studies (GWAS) used a subset of 96 diverse sorghum accessions, constructed from a large collection of 219 accessions for mining novel genetic loci linked to major agronomic and physiological traits including root. The subset yielded 43,452 high quality single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers exhibiting high allelic diversity. Population stratification showed distinct separation between caudatum and durra races. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) decay was rapidly declining with increasing physical distance across all chromosomes. The initial 50% LD decay was ~ 5Kb and background level was within or below ~ 80Kb. Plant height and grain color identified significant SNPs co-localized with dwarfing dw2 locus and chalcone synthase, respectively, indicating the representativeness of the population and reliability of methods. AP2-like ethylene-responsive transcription factor and gibberellin receptor GID1L2 affecting single plant yield and biomass respectively were identified. The study detected novel genetic loci linked to drought avoidance traits viz., Leucine rich repeat family protein (root biomass and root architecture), AP2 domain containing protein (intrinsic water use efficiency) and serine/threonine protein kinase (abaxial stomatal complex total area). This study justified that the constructed subset of diverse sorghums can be used as a panel for mapping other key traits to accelerate molecular breeding in sorghum.