Genetic Improvement of Pearl Millet in India

Abstract

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is grown widely in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions in Indian subcontinent and African continent under the most adverse agro-climatic conditions where other crops like sorghum and maize fail to produce economic yields. Its grains are valued as human food while its dry stover makes important livestock ration in crop-livestock farming system. Enormous progress has been made in the genetic improvement of pearl millet in India during last several decades. This paper presents an overview of strategies followed in genetic improvement of pearl millet, assesses the impact of this research on crop productivity and presents its future prospects in climate-change scenario for providing food and nutritional security. The genetic improvement programme evolved strongly starting from selection in local and traditional material and reaching development of high-yielding hybrids with in-built resistance to diseases and tolerance to climatic stresses like drought and heat. The major approach in hybrid breeding has been to strategically utilize germplasm from Africa and Indian subcontinent with the result that a large number of genetically diverse hybrids have been developed with different combinations of phenotypic traits that are important for adaptation to different ecological regions. The genetic diversification of hybrids has proved very critical to contain downy mildew epidemics which had threatened hybrid technology per se in mid-1970s. A great deal of work has been done on understanding the epidemiology of different diseases and crop response to moisture stress that helped in developing diseaseresistant and stress-tolerant cultivars. More than 100 cultivars with a combination of diverse phenotypic traits have been released in the last 25 years, providing a wide range of choice to farmers in different production ecologies of the crop. These cultivars have been widely adopted by Indian farmers with the result that the crop productivity has gone up from 305 kg ha-1 during 1951-1955 to 998 kg ha-1 during 2008-2012, registering a 227 % improvement which assumes greater significance given that more than 90 % of pearl millet is grown as rainfed and often on marginal lands. In future, pearl millet is likely to play a greater role in providing food and nutritional security. Pearl millet would also be an excellent genomic resource for isolation of candidate genes responsible for tolerance to climatic and edaphic stresses for accelerating further genetic improvement of this crop as well as for their possible deployment in the genetic improvement of other crops.

Possible effect of threshing method on grain iron and zinc density estimation in pearl millet: a contribution to biofortification breeding

“…Dominant pearl millet cultivated areas in India are Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh where majority of the populations relies upon pearl millet grain as a staple food and its fodder for animal husbandry (Yadav and Rai, 2013) and these states contributes a larger portion of total area (70%) and production (80%). Micronutrient malnutrition is primarily caused by inadequate intake of essential nutrients, particularly prevalent among resource poor families in the developing world, has emerged as a major health challenge where they mainly rely on cereal-based diet as staple food.…”

Elicitation of resistance and associated defense responses in Trichoderma hamatum induced protection against pearl millet downy mildew pathogen

“…It is currently grown in an area of over 28 million hectares worldwide, upon which approximately 500 million people depend on for their survival. In India, it is grown in an area of 7.95 million hectares with an annual production of 8.9 million tons1. Since growth in cultivated areas is unlikely to contribute much to future production, the burden of meeting increased demand for pearl millet rests on improvements in crop yields.…”

“…Schroet, is a major constraint for pearl millet production, causing exhaustive losses up to 80%12. Management of pearl millet downy mildew is achieved by cultural practices, use of resistant cultivars, chemical, and biological control, but each with its own shortcomings3.…”

Cloning, expression and purification of resistance gene analogue RGPM 301 from pearl millet in Escherichia coli

“…Br.] grown in the arid and semi-arid tropics of Indian subcontinent and Africa serves as a staple food and fodder crop of millions of poor families of these regions [9]. The crop is found to possess high potentiality with tolerance to high temperatures and also drought stress conditions [10].…”