Abstract
Finger millet, an orphan crop, possesses immense potential in mitigating climate change and could offer threefold security in terms of food, fodder, and nutrition. It is mostly cultivated as a subsistence crop in the marginal areas of plains and hills. Considering the changes in climate inclusive of recurrent weather vagaries witnessed every year, it is crucial to select stable, high-yielding, area-specific, finger millet cultivars. Sixty finger millet varieties released across the country were evaluated over six consecutive rainy seasons from 2011 to 2016 at the Agricultural Research Station, Vizianagaram. The genotype × environment interaction (GEI) was found to be significant in the combined ANOVA. Furthermore, the Additive Main effects and Multiplicative Interaction (AMMI) analysis asserted that genotypes and the GEI effects accounted for approximately 89% of the total variation. Strong positive associations were observed in an estimated set of eleven stability parameters which were chosen to identify stable genotypes. Furthermore, Non-parametric and Parametric Simultaneous Selection indices (NP-SSI and P-SSI) were calculated utilizing AMMI-based stability parameter (ASTAB), modified AMMI stability value (MASV), and Modified AMMI Stability Index (MASI) to identify stable high yielders. Both methods had inherent difficulties in ranking genotypes for SSI. To overcome this, the initial culling [i.e., SSI with culling strategy (C-SSI)] of genotypes was introduced for stability. In the C-SSI method, the top ten genotypes were above-average yielders, while those with below-average yield were observed in NP-SSI and P-SSI methods. Similarly, the estimation of best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP)-based simultaneous selections, such as harmonic mean of genotypic values (HMGV), relative performance of genotypic values (RPGV), and harmonic mean of relative performance of genotypic values (HMRPGV), revealed that none of the top ten entries had below-average yield. The study has proven that C-SSI and BLUP-based methods were equally worthy in the selection of high-yielding genotypes with stable performance. However, the C-SSI approach could be the best method to ensure that genotypes with a considerable amount of stability are selected. The multi-year trial SSI revealed that entries Indaf-9, Sri Chaitanya, PR-202, and A-404; and VL324 and VL146 were ascertained to be the most stable high-yielding genotypes among medium-to-late and early maturity groups, respectively.
Highlights
In a thrust to achieve food security, few crops were intensively cultivated while other neglected crops turned out to be “Orphan crops.” Small millets are the hitherto staple food for millions of people residing in arid and semiarid regions of Asian and African countries and are currently restricted to certain traditional growing areas
Mean squares from the combined ANOVA revealed that the environments, genotypes, and genotype × environment interaction (GEI) showed significant variation at 0.1% (p < 0.001) for grain yield (Table 2)
The analysis revealed that GEI was significantly explained by the first four principal components (PCs)
Summary
In a thrust to achieve food security, few crops were intensively cultivated while other neglected crops turned out to be “Orphan crops.” Small millets are the hitherto staple food for millions of people residing in arid and semiarid regions of Asian and African countries and are currently restricted to certain traditional growing areas. Finger millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.], one of the small millets, is highly nutritious in terms of fiber content, essential amino acids, calcium, and minerals (Sood et al, 2016). Regular consumption of finger millet allows for healthy bone growth in children and prevents osteoporosis in adults As it is rich in fiber with a low glycemic index, it is beneficial to include it in the diet of persons suffering from diabetics and other lifestyle diseases (Mitharwal et al, 2021). They are rich in antioxidants with anticancer agents as well as high levels of methionine, lysine, and tryptophan, which are limited in other cereals. India is the major producer of finger millet that is being cultivated in an area of 1.17 million hectares with a production of 2.00 million tons and an average productivity of 1,661 kg/ha (ASSOCHAM, 2021)
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