Performance of landraces, exotic elite populations and their crosses in pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) in drought and non‐drought conditions

Abstract

The crop cultivars targeted for drought prone areas need to combine drought tolerance and high yield. The present study was conducted to assess the performance of three selected pearl millet landraces, four exotic elite populations and their 12 crosses. They were evaluated for yield, yield components and a drought susceptibility index that was calculated using yield data from drought and non-drought environments. In the non-drought season, the exotic populations had significantly higher grain yield than landraces. However, in the severe drought season, the landraces produced significantly greater biomass, grain and stover yields than elite populations. There was a strong relation between panicle size and ability to produce panicles and delay in flowering under severe stress. The biomass and stover yield of crosses was significantly better than parental populations under both drought stress and near-optimum conditions. The elite populations were most sensitive to drought while crosses were as drought tolerant as landraces because they combined larger panicle size of exotics and lesser delay in flowering of landraces. The results indicated that it is possible to combine drought adaptation with high yield potential through hybridization between adapted landraces and elite genetic materials.

Root traits contributing to plant productivity under drought

“…Nonetheless, landrace varieties for certain species may also show potential for introgression of genetic diversity into modern varieties. Not all landrace varieties or wild accessions should be expected to show abiotic stress tolerance, but successful use of this approach can be seen in crops such as barley (Ceccarelli and Grando, 1991), wheat (Trethowan and Mujeeb-Kazi, 2008), and pearl millet (Yadav, 2008). …”

Comparison of responses to drought stress of 100 wheat accessions and landraces to identify opportunities for improving wheat drought resistance*

“…Landraces are being used for improving the adaptability of high‐yielding cultivars grown under dry environments (Trethowan and Reynolds 2007, Yadav 2008). Tolerance to locally appearing stresses (Li et al.…”

“…Landraces are being used for improving the adaptability of high-yielding cultivars grown under dry environments (Trethowan and , Yadav 2008. Tolerance to locally appearing stresses (Li et al 1997) and yield stability are often mentioned as characteristic features of landraces (Tesemma et al 1998).…”

Prospects of enhancing biomass yield to improve both grain and stover yields of arid zone pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L. R. Br.)

“…Similarly there was a 1.8-to 2.4-fold difference for yield-contributing traits like There was also significant g 9 e interactions for all traits except panicle length (Table 2) indicating that expression of traits was significantly modified by seasons. This was expected as high g 9 e interactions are features of marginal drought environments (Saeed and Francis 1984;Virk 1988;van Oosterom et al 1993;van Oosterom et al 1996;Yadav 2008). These results underline importance of multi-environment evaluation of test material in order to quantify g 9 e effects.…”