Selenated NHC-Pd(II) Pincer Complex Catalyzed, Temperature-Dependent Selective Hydroamination and Oxidative Amination of Olefins: Formation of Enamine Esters and ß-Amino Esters under Solvent-Free and Aerobic Conditions.

NHC-Pd(II) pincer catalyzed oxidative amination and hydroamination of olefins is developed under solvent-free aerobic conditions. Reaction offered a temperature-controlled synthesis of (Z)-enamine and ß-amino esters to provide easy access and remarkable functional group tolerance for a variety of enamines. The developed approach renders an opportunity of scalability and flexibility, and besides this, the produced enamines can be transformed into many N-containing heterocycles, underscoring its potential usage in synthetic and pharmaceutical chemistry. Moreover, it is the first report for coupling of aniline with styrene.

Introgression of "QTL-hotspot" region enhances drought tolerance and grain yield in three elite chickpea cultivars.

With an aim of enhancing drought tolerance using a marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC) approach, we introgressed the "QTL-hotspot" region from ICC 4958 accession that harbors quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for several drought-tolerance related traits into three elite Indian chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars: Pusa 372, Pusa 362, and DCP 92-3. Of eight simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in the QTL-hotspot region, two to three polymorphic markers were used for foreground selection with respective cross-combinations. A total of 47, 53, and 46 SSRs were used for background selection in case of introgression lines (ILs) developed in genetic backgrounds of Pusa 372, Pusa 362, and DCP 92-3, respectively. In total, 61 ILs (20 BC3 F3 in Pusa 372; 20 BC2 F3 in Pusa 362, and 21 BC3 F3 in DCP 92-3), with >90% recurrent parent genome recovery were developed. Six improved lines in different genetic backgrounds (e.g. BGM 10216 in Pusa 372; BG 3097 and BG 4005 in Pusa 362; IPC(L4-14), IPC(L4-16), and IPC(L19-1) in DCP 92-3) showed better performance than their respective recurrent parents. BGM 10216, with 16% yield gain over Pusa 372, has been released as Pusa Chickpea 10216 by the Central Sub-Committees on Crop Standards, Notification and Release of Varieties of Agricultural Crops, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, for commercial cultivation in India. In summary, this study reports introgression of the QTL-hotspot for enhancing yield under rainfed conditions, development of several introgression lines, and release of Pusa Chickpea 10216 developed through molecular breeding in India.