Small millets are very promising agricultural entity to ensure global food security. They gained remarkable importance in agriculture due to their resilience to climatic changes and increasing demand for nutritious food and feed. The genetic variability in the core and mini-core germplasm of small millets was characterized for nutritional composition and capacity to tolerate abiotic stresses that can be infused in breeding programs. Other than the foxtail millet, availability of genomic information in small millets is far below the mark for use in marker-assisted breeding and other genetic improvement programs. The genome sequence of foxtail millet has recently triggered a plethora of post-genomic analysis and envisaged foxtail millet as a model organism for the C 4 grasses and bioenergy research. Recent developments in the next-generation sequencing technologies enabled us, with the simultaneous discovery of high-throughput markers and multiplexed genotyping of germplasm, to speedup markerassisted breeding. In this context, an in-depth analysis of the wealth of diverse germplasm resources and future perspectives of integrating genomics in genome-wide marker-trait association and breeding in small millets is worthy. ABBREVIATIONS cDNA D complementary DNA cM D centimorgan DREB D dehydration response element binding FAO D Food and Agricultural Organization ICAR D Indian Council of Agricultural Research ICRISAT D International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics Mb D mega basepairs Mha D million hectares Mt D million tonnes Mya D million years ago NARS D National Agricultural Research System NCBI D National Center for Biotechnology Information NGS D next-generation sequencing PCR D polymerase chain reaction PGR D plant genetic resources SNP D single nucleotide polymorphism SSR D simple sequence repeat QTLs D quantitative trait loci

No abstract

No abstract

Improved breeding for developing fruit quality in bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.) necessitates knowledge regarding its genetic diversity. To achieve this, a set of 108 locus-specific SSR markers has been developed in bottle gourd by cross-species transferability from 995 mapped Cucumis sativus SSR markers. During screening, 280 primer pairs amplified in the bottle gourd germplasm, which were further evaluated in a diverse set of 42 lines, resulting in 19 polymorphic, 89 monomorphic, 15 with multiple bands, and the rest 157 showed no or very non-specific amplification. The 19 polymorphic primer pairs produced a total of 54 alleles. Gene diversity, Shannon's information index, and Nei's coefficient of differentiation were calculated suggesting a moderate genetic variation at the species level. A model-based population structure analysis divided these germplasm into two subpopulations. This marker set will be applicable for evaluating the genetic structure for association mapping, DNA fingerprinting, and mounting linkage maps and will be a practical tool set for further genetics. This study provides one of the first quantitative views of population genetic variation in bottle gourd.

No abstract