**10. Future perspectives**

of inheritance [87]. Recent years have witnessed an immense interest in generation and utilization of molecular markers, as they provide the essential tools for a variety of genomic applications such as QTL mapping, map-based cloning, marker-assisted breeding, association mapping and genetic diversity assessment. These approaches can be applied to understand the genomic architecture of the crop and can expand the efficiency of breeding programmes, thereby aiding to expedite agricultural research. The advent of NGS has enabled the exploration of thousands of markers across entire genomes and transcriptomes. Although transcriptomics has been majorly used for gene expression analysis, it has also been utilized to identify molecular markers such as SSRs and SNPs especially in the genic regions. Such gene-based markers located in coding regions of the genes greatly enhance the opportunity of precise mapping of genes linked to important traits. Transcriptome sequencing offers another advantage for those crops in which a reference genome is not available. To identify SSRs from transcriptome data, several bioinformatics tools have been developed such as MISA (MIcroSAtellite identification tool) (pgrc.ipk-gatersleben.de/misa/), RISA (Rapid Identification of SSRs and Analysis of primers) (http://sol.kribb.re.kr/RISA/) and RepeatAnalyzer [88]. In chickpea, initially a large number of molecular markers were derived from ESTs. Buhariwalla et al. [89] reported 106 EST-based markers developed from an EST library of root tissue from chickpea. In another study by Choudhary et al. [90], 2131 ESTs were utilized for development of 246 EST-SSR markers. Apart from SSRs, several types of markers such as ESTPs, PIPs and EST-SNPs were developed in chickpea using transcriptome data. For instance, Choudhary et al. [91] reported 125 EST-SSRs, 109 ESTPs, 102 SNPs and 151 ITPs. Gupta et al. [57] reported 367 novel EST-derived functional markers which included 187 EST-SSRs, 130 potential intron polymorphisms (PIPs) and 50 expressed sequence tag polymorphisms (ESTPs). In another study, 71 gene-based SNP markers were developed utilizing candidate chickpea transcripts [92]. However, currently transcriptomic resources can be easily generated by high-throughput NGS technologies and utilized to identify molecular markers very rapidly and cost-effectively. Hiremath et al. [36] utilizing the Roche platform generated about 3000 gene-based markers from a large subset of transcripts derived from different chickpea tissues. Currently, SNPs are the markers of choice and are preferred over the SSRs and other markers because of their genome-wide presence and amenability to high-throughput genotyping. Theoretically, SNP calling may be defined as the process of identifying a single-nucleotide variation from an accession read that differs from the existing reference genome or a de novo assembly at similar nucleotide position. Read assembly files generated by mapping programs such as BWA, Bowtie and SOAP are used to perform SNP calling. Bioinformatics tools such as HaploSNPer [93], SAMtools [94, 95], POLYBAYES [96], SNVer [97] and SOAPsnp [98] have been designed to detect the variations in the NGS data. Comparison of transcriptome datasets from contrasting genotypes could help derive SNPs. To date, several studies have been carried out using NGS technology-based transcriptome sequencing to generate large sets of molecular markers in various crop species including chickpea. For instance, a report by Garg et al. [35] facilitated identification of 4816 SSRs from the de novo assembly of the chickpea transcriptome. In another study, sequencing the transcriptome of *C. reticulatum* (PI489777), the wild relative of chickpea, by GS-FLX 454 technology, generated a total of 4072 SSRs and 36,446 SNPs.

254 Applications of RNA-Seq and Omics Strategies - From Microorganisms to Human Health

The last few years have witnessed legume genomics attaining new heights as genomes, and transcriptomes of many model legumes (*M. truncatula*, *L. japonicus*) and crop legumes (*G. max*, *C. cajan*, *P. vulgaris*, *Arachis hypogaea*, *Vignas*, etc.) were sequenced. Transcriptomes of both types of cultivated chickpea (desi and kabuli) and its wild progenitor (*C. reticulatum*) have also been sequenced. Several studies have been carried out to analyse the transcriptome of chickpea which have led to genome-wide determination of transcript levels in various tissues and developmental pathways as well as during biotic and abiotic stresses. This comprehensive analysis of the chickpea transcriptome has advanced the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying several critical biological pathways in chickpea. Moreover, analyses of the non-coding RNAs have revealed potential regulators of important pathways affecting the overall development and stress tolerance in chickpea. Further, transcriptome analysis has also facilitated the development of large sets of genic molecular markers such as SSRs and SNPs that will serve as excellent tools for advancing the chickpea breeding programmes. Overall, the transcriptome sequencing of chickpea has not only provided a deep insight into the gene space and quantitation of gene expression but also an opportunity to isolate genes of interest and functional markers for use in chickpea improvement.
