Abstract
The continuous increase in the world population and the associated food demands in the wake of climate change are pushing for the development and cultivation of climate-resilient crops that are able to efficiently use natural resources. Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) might be a promising candidate crop thanks to its heat stress resistance and its limited water demand. To date, one of the most important strategies to increase grain yield and to improve other agronomic important traits is through an efficient breeding program based on a wide genetic variability of parental germplasm. In this study, we evaluated the agronomical traits of a world collection of 80 P. miliaceum accessions. The entire collection was evaluated over a 2 year field experiment under Mediterranean pedoclimatic conditions, which exhibited a wide range of variability for plant height (25–111 cm), grain yield (842–3125 kg ha−1), total dry biomass (2767–10,627 kg ha−1), harvest index (HI; 0.25–0.35), Growing Degree Days (GDDs; 581–899), and days to maturity (80–111 d). A non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance (Np-MANOVA) analysis indicated that GDDs to flowering, grain yield, total dry biomass, days to maturity, plant height, and seed yield per plant were useful parameters to differentiate the germplasm accessions. High heritability (>0.60) was observed in both years for plant height, leaf number, basal tiller, seed yield per plant, 100-seed weight, GDDs to flowering, and days to maturity. Grain yield, total dry biomass, and HI reported moderate heritability (0.30–0.60). The findings reported in the present study may provide valuable information that could support researchers in breeding programs to develop high grain-yielding accessions.
Highlights
By 2050, the world’s population is expected to have increased rapidly, from about 7 billion to 9.2 billion people, boosting the global food demand by up to 60% [1,2]
The outcomes of the general linear mixed model (GLMM) model indicate that the genotypes differed significantly (p < 0.01) for plant height, grain yield, total dry biomass, harvest index (HI), Growing Degree Days (GDDs) to flowering, and days to maturity among the single years (Table 3)
All proso millet accessions showed a wide range of variability for all of the measured traits, especially for plant height (25–104 cm in 2018 and 33–111 cm in 2019), grain yield (842–2982 kg ha−1 in 2018 and 891–3125 kg ha−1 in 2019), total dry biomass (2889–9664 kg ha−1 in 2018 and 2767–10,627 kg ha−1 in 2019), HI (0.25–0.33 in 2018 and 0.27–0.35 in 2019), GDDs to flowering (581–891 in 2018 and 592–899 in 2019), and days to maturity
Summary
By 2050, the world’s population is expected to have increased rapidly, from about 7 billion to 9.2 billion people, boosting the global food demand by up to 60% [1,2]. Cereal crop consumption supports approximately 50% of the total calorie intake of the world and is largely supplied by wheat, rice, and maize [3,4,5]. Panicum miliaceum is one of the first domesticated crops in the world, and it was cultivated before the diffusion of rice, maize, and wheat [19,20]. Millet grains still represent an important cereal food as a source of energy and protein for millions of people living in arid and semiarid areas in emerging countries, while millet biomass represents an interesting source of forage in some Asian countries, such as India [23,24]. In the Western world, P. miliaceum is considered a minor cereal due to its poor economic importance, and it is usually used as feed or fodder for farm animals [19,21]
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