Estimates of Combining Ability and Heterosis for Yield and Its Related Traits in Pearl Millet Inbred Lines under Downy Mildew Prevalent Areas of Senegal

Abstract

Pearl millet is an important cereal crop for smallholder farmers’ food security in West and Central Africa. However, its production has stagnated due to several factors such as the continuous use of local populations. A set of 17 inbred lines was crossed with Sosat C 88 and Souna 3 following a line × tester mating design. The F1 hybrids, their parents, and a check were evaluated in Bambey and Nioro research stations during the rainy season of 2017. Data on downy mildew incidence, plant height, flowering time, panicle length and diameter, productive tillers, thousand-grain weight, panicle, and grain yield were recorded. GCA and SCA mean squares were significant for most of the traits indicating that both additive and nonadditive gene effects were involved in the control of the inheritance of these traits. However, the contribution of GCA to total mean squares was higher than that of SCA for all the traits, providing that additive gene action was more important in their inheritance. The top-cross hybrid IBL155-2-1 × Sosat C 88 exhibited negative and significant SCA effects for downy mildew incidence, flowering time, and plant height. Lines IBL003-B-1, IBL091-1-1, IBL095-4-1, IBL110-B-1, and IBL 206-1-1 had positive GCA effects for grain yield and negative GCA effects for downy mildew, flowering time, and plant height. These lines can be used as parents to create synthetic varieties or hybrids.

Heterosis and Combining Abilities in a Diverse Seven-Parent Pearl Millet Population Diallel Tested in West Africa

“…Parental OPVs with a negative GCA for PH could be used to produce a hybrid with medium height and reduced lodging. The magnitude of σ²gca was higher than σ²sca for GY and other traits indicating the prevalence of additive gene action in the inheritance of these traits, which agrees with other studies on pearl millet (Kanfany et al 2018;Ouendeba et al 1993, Zaveri et al 1988. This ultimately facilitates the prediction of hybrid performance, because it can be predicted from their parental per se performance.…”

“…Presence of heterosis was found in many of the previous studies on pearl millet. The trials that were based on line × tester designs with inbred parents cannot be compared directly with our results, but showed the potential of pearl millet top-cross hybrids for WA (Bidinger et al 1994;Bidinger et al 2005;Kanfany et al 2018;Mahalakshmi et al 1992;Yadav et al 2000). In our study, the PMPH and PBPH level of GY was relatively higher than of the other traits which agrees with several studies on heterosis in pearl millet (Bidinger et al 2003;Pucher et al 2016;Yadav et al 2006).…”

“…Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.)] is one of the most important cereal crops in arid and semi-arid regions of Africa and India, due to its ability to tolerate severe abiotic stress such as drought, high temperature, poor soil conditions and salinity (Gemenet et al 2015, Gemenet et al 2016Krishnamurthy et al 2007;Payne et al 1998;Pucher et al 2015;van Staveren and Stoop 1985). It is mainly produced by African and Indian smallholder farmers as their major source of food along with its usage as green biomass (Kanfany et al 2018) and building material (Mason et al 2015). As it can serve both human and animal nutrition, pearl millet is often used as "dual purpose" crop (Kelley et al 1996) in those countries.…”

Genetic Analysis in Pearl millet Using Line x Tester Design

“…Other crosses like ICMA 1 -15666 x 92-SB-18, ICMA 1 -15666 x J-2605 and JMSA 4 -20172 x 52-SB-18 having high mean value for grain yield and having significant positive heterobeltiosis and standard heterosis involved good x good, good x good and good x average combiners, respectively. These results are supported by Acharya (2017), Katba (2017), Solanki et al, (2017), Kanfany et al, (2018) and Kumawat et al, (2019).…”

A unified strategy for West African pearl millet hybrid and heterotic group development

“…Finding the best hybrid parent combinations and selecting the best hybrids is usually challenged by the large number of test crosses that have to be produced and evaluated (Bernardo, 1994). Several approaches to predict hybrid performance were developed, starting with a phenotypic GCA-based hybrid prediction that repeatedly has been applied in pearl millet (Dutta, 2019;Kanfany et al, 2018;Ouendeba et al, 1993;Pucher et al, 2016;Sattler et al, 2019). Combining molecular marker information with phenotypic data in maize improved this approach considerably (Bernardo, 1998).…”