Abstract
The development of crops adapted to the semi-arid and arid regions would enhance food security in Africa. As part of research towards ensuring food security, field trials were carried out to evaluate the performance of sixteen hybrids of drought tolerant Quantitative trait loci (QTL) introgression lines of pearl millet in a Guinea-Savannah zone of Ghana, where the crop is one of the cereals popularly cultivated by farmers as a staple. The hybrids were obtained from ICRISAT in India and the validation trial was laid out in a randomized complete block design with (4) replicates. All the sixteen lines (843A × H77/833-2, ICML03048 × H77/833-2, ICML03050 × H77/833-2, ICML03051 × H77/833 -2, ICML03052 × H77/833-2, ICML03056 × H77/833-2, ICML03057 × H77/833-2, 841B × H77/833-2, 863B × H77/833-2, 843A × ICMR01029, 843A × ICMR01031, 843A × ICMR 01040, 843A × ICMR 01046, 843A × ICMR 01042, 843A × ICMR 01044 and 843A × PRLT2/89-33) were able to withstand the environmental conditions during the trial period. Three entries (843A × PRLT 2/89-33, 843A × ICMR 01046 and 843A × ICMR 01029) took fewer days to boot. Two hybrids (843A × H77/833-2 and 843A × PRLT 2/89-33) had the highest values of 100-seed weight. The hybrid 863B × H77/833-2 was outstanding in terms of plant height, fresh and dry stover weights, ear head length and diameter; 100-seed weight, head yield and grain yield. It is, therefore, concluded that marker-assisted selection could be used to breed for high yielding millet cultivars in drought prone savannah agro-ecological zones of northern Ghana to enhance yields and improve food security.
Highlights
Millet is a collective term referring to a number of small seeded annual grasses that are cultivated as grain crops, primarily, on marginal lands in dry areas in temperate and subtropical regions
Brown, is commonly known as pearl, bulrush, cattail, or spiked millet in English; bajra in Hindi; kambu in Tamil, and dukhn in Arabic, and kyi in Dagaare. It is the crop of the driest region. It is drought-resistant and yields well on infertile sandy soils which could be unsuitable for other important cereal groups
Br.) in the Guinea Savannah Zone of Ghana stand drought, give best growth parameters and grain yields in the Guinea Savannah zone of Ghana, where the crop is popularly grown for food
Summary
Millet is a collective term referring to a number of small seeded annual grasses that are cultivated as grain crops, primarily, on marginal lands in dry areas in temperate and subtropical regions. Brown, is commonly known as pearl, bulrush, cattail, or spiked millet in English; bajra in Hindi; kambu in Tamil, and dukhn in Arabic, and kyi in Dagaare. Among the cereals, it is the crop of the driest region. It is the crop of the driest region It is drought-resistant and yields well on infertile sandy soils which could be unsuitable for other important cereal groups. It thrives well on light-textured and well-drained soils, and does not tolerate water-logging and flooding [2,3]. Millet grain is nutritious and form a major staple food for over 500 million people in some parts of Africa and India [2]
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