8 - Proso, barnyard, little, and kodo millets

Abstract

Proso, barnyard, little, and kodo millets are highly nutritious with diverse usage. They are well adapted to harsh climatic conditions, require limited inputs, and are the potential crops for food and nutritional security in the context of global climate change. Globally, about 50,000 germplasm accessions of these crops have been conserved, and the largest collections of proso millet are in the Russian Federation and China, barnyard millet in Japan, and kodo and little millet in India. These crops have large variation for yield components and stress tolerance traits. Core collections representing diversity of entire collections of these crops have been developed for identification of new sources of variation for biotic and abiotic stresses, and for quality and agronomic traits for use in crop improvement and genomic studies. Genomic resources are limited in these crops and efforts to develop such resources through high-throughput genotyping approaches and using genomic resources available in taxonomically closest species are required.