**2.5 Genomic assisted breeding**

The world's population is rapidly growing and is expected to hit 9 billion by 2050. This massive pressure on population would contribute to a serious food shortage. Pulses in the vegetarian diet are essential sources of proteins, for pulses improvement, extensive breeding programmes have been done through conventional breeding and significantly developed several high-yielding varieties [46]; however, the pace of genetic improvement of pulse crops is very slow. Limited success was achieved through conventional breeding even after continuous and systematic breeding efforts due to several constraints. One of the major constraints on expression of quantitative traits is high G x E interaction leading to slow genetic gain [6]. For strengthening conventional breeding programmes, integration of novel breeding strategies and techniques is required for revolutionary changes. During the last decade, the performance of legume breeding programme has increased significantly, as a result of novel genomic tools and techniques incorporated with the conventional breeding methods. In order to incorporate genomics in breeding, genomics-assisted breeding was suggested, and it has been effective for many traits in cereals and legumes. Genomic-assisted breeding will accelerate the genetic enhancement of pulses which leads to development of cultivars with higher yield and multiple stress tolerant. The availability of molecular markers such as simple sequence repeats and SNPs has enabled the dissection of complex characteristics that limit crop production, In the case of pigeonpea and soybean, genome-wide SNPs focused on resequencing of many germplasm lines were also used to establish marker-trait associations.
