Global Lentil Production: Constraints and Strategies

Abstract

Lentil (Lens culinaris ssp. culinaris) is an important food legume crop with global production of 3.59 million tonnes. The crop suffers substantial yield losses from various biotic and abiotic stresses. Past efforts have been directed towards developing improved varieties with resistance to one or the other biotic stress, improving the seed size and shortening the crop duration to fit lentil in various cropping systems. In the past one decade, production and productivity of lentil have stagnated in the traditional base of South Asia. In order to break the current yield plateau in lentil, there is a need to develop extra short duration varieties for rice-based systems for South Asia, drought and heat tolerant varieties with multiple disease resistance for all the regions, and herbicide-tolerant and machine harvestable varieties for West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. This requires a comprehensive research for developing strategy involving both the conventional and genomics tool.