Abstract
AbstractPearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is one of the world's hardiest warm‐season cereal crop and is cultivated mainly in the semi‐arid tropics of Asia and Africa for food, feed, fodder, and brewing. It is mainly cultivated for its gluten‐free grains with high content and better quality of nutrients. Pearl millet is a resilient crop that can produce grain and biomass under harsh conditions like low fertility, erratic rainfall, acidic and saline soils, and the hottest climates. However, biotic stresses such as downy mildew and blast diseases and abiotic stresses, especially drought and seedling‐ and flowering‐stage heat stress, pose constant threat to the realization of yield potential of this crop. To make further improvement in threshold level of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, breeders are looking for novel genes in diverse germplasm sources. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) could be a source of novel genes that are important for diversification of the genetic base of pearl millet. A stage‐gate process is proposed for the efficient management of prebreeding programs using CWRs as a source of germplasm diversity and improvement. This article explains the various strategies for capturing and using alleles for climate resilience traits improvement. This article covers breeders’ perspectives on importance of using CWRs as germplasm source for crop improvement. This article also describes the availability of CWRs, characterization of new traits and the strategies to be applied for the identification and introduction of genes of interest in elite breeding lines and commercial varieties and hybrids of pearl millet.
Highlights
The study conducted by Burgarella et al (2018) provided the evidences that worldwide cultivated pearl millet varieties were derived from a common ancestor of wild populations found today in the central Sahel and the wild-to-crop gene flow during its agricultural diffusion increased cultivated genetic diversity leading to diversity hotspots in western and eastern Sahel outside the center of origin
Based on the cross-compatibility relationship between cultivated pearl millet and crop wild relative (CWR), these species were classified into primary (GP1), secondary (GP2), and tertiary (GP3) gene pools following Harlan and de Wet (1971) (Supplemental Table S1)
High genetic differentiation between cultivated pearl millet and wild Pennisetum species was observed using microsatellite markers, which revealed that only 74% of the genetic diversity of wild relatives is found in the domesticated groups (Oumar et al, 2008), suggesting that domestication has led to a decrease in genetic diversity
Summary
The study conducted by Burgarella et al (2018) provided the evidences that worldwide cultivated pearl millet varieties were derived from a common ancestor of wild populations found today in the central Sahel and the wild-to-crop gene flow during its agricultural diffusion increased cultivated genetic diversity leading to diversity hotspots in western and eastern Sahel outside the center of origin. These results fit well with the recent archeological hypothesis wherein the oldest archaeobotanical evidence of 4,500-yr-old domesticated pearl millet was found in the lower Tilemsi Valley in northeastern Mali (Manning, Pelling, Higham, Schwenniger, & Fuller, 2011).
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