In an effort to boost agricultural biotechnology, India's government has launched a plant genome initiative to sequence the entire genome of chickpea, a major Indian food crop. The government has allocated $4 million to The National Centre for Plant Genome Research (NCPGR; New Delhi) to conduct sequencing in association with a network of seven plant molecular biology laboratories funded by the government's Department of Biotechnology. "The primary goal of our center is to develop transgenic plants," says NCPGR Director Asis Datta. "The sequencing of chickpea, we hope, will help identify useful genes and promoters which we could use for creating crops with improved traits like tolerance to stress and better nutritional quality." Datta says India has chosen legumes because crops such as rice, wheat, and maize are already being sequenced elsewhere and "other countries will never take up chickpea as it is not their crop." However, attracting qualified researchers could prove tricky, as many of the country's plant genomics researchers are being lured to major industry players. Monsanto, which has its own plant genomic research center in Bangalore, offers better salaries and more stable job prospects than NCPGR.