Abstract
Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is the sixth most important cereal crop after rice, wheat, maize, barley and sorghum. It is widely grown on 30 million ha in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of Asia and Africa, accounting for almost half of the global millet production. Climate change affects crop production by directly influencing biophysical factors such as plant and animal growth along with the various areas associated with food processing and distribution. Assessment of the effects of global climate changes on agriculture can be helpful to anticipate and adapt farming to maximize the agricultural production more effectively. Pearl millet being a climate-resilient crop is important to minimize the adverse effects of climate change and has the potential to increase income and food security of farming communities in arid regions. Pearl millet has a deep root system and can survive in a wide range of ecological conditions under water scarcity. It has high photosynthetic efficiency with an excellent productivity and growth in low nutrient soil conditions and is less reliant on chemical fertilizers. These attributes have made it a crop of choice for cultivation in arid and semi-arid regions of the world; however, fewer efforts have been made to study the climate-resilient features of pearl millet in comparison to the other major cereals. Several hybrids and varieties of pearl millet were developed during the past 50 years in India by both the public and private sectors. Pearl millet is also nutritionally superior and rich in micronutrients such as iron and zinc and can mitigate malnutrition and hidden hunger. Inclusion of minimum standards for micronutrients—grain iron and zinc content in the cultivar release policy—is the first of its kind step taken in pearl millet anywhere in the world, which can lead toward enhanced food and nutritional security. The availability of high-quality whole-genome sequencing and re-sequencing information of several lines may aid genomic dissection of stress tolerance and provide a good opportunity to further exploit the nutritional and climate-resilient attributes of pearl millet. Hence, more efforts should be put into its genetic enhancement and improvement in inheritance to exploit it in a better way. Thus, pearl millet is the next-generation crop holding the potential of nutritional richness and the climate resilience and efforts must be targeted to develop nutritionally dense hybrids/varieties tolerant to drought using different omics approaches.
Highlights
The changing climate is leading to an increase in global average temperature affecting agricultural production worldwide
DArT platform was established for pearl millet, and 574 polymorphic DArT markers were mapped and used to genotype a set of 24 diverse pearl millet inbred lines Conserved intron-specific primers (CISP) were developed from EST sequences using parents of two mapping populations for 18 genes Consensus linkage maps based on SSRs were constructed using four recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations Genetic diversity was analyzed in a novel set of restorer lines using SSR markers in pearl millet Development of ISSR-based SCAR markers in pearl millet Identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using GBS platform A panel of 21,663 SNP markers was developed Morphological and molecular genetic diversity analysis of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) maintainers and restorers
Indian policymakers need to refocus their interest toward millet farming systems and policies should be engraved for creating a feasible environment for pearl millet farmers
Summary
The changing climate is leading to an increase in global average temperature affecting agricultural production worldwide. Assessment of effects of global climate changes and deployment of new tools and strategies to mitigate their effect is crucial to maximizing agricultural production to meet out food demands of the increasing population In this context, pearl millet is most useful as it is a nutritious, climate change-ready crop with enormous potential for yielding higher economic returns in marginal conditions in comparison with other cereals even in case of climate change with harsh temperature conditions. Jukanti et al (2016) have reviewed the origin and evolutionary history of pearl millet It is the sixth major cereal crop in the world followed by maize, rice, wheat, barley and sorghum and cultivated on 30 million ha in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of Asia and Africa accounting for around half of the global millet production with 60% of the cultivation area in Africa, followed by 35% in Asian countries. Various molecular markers developed for pearl millet include restriction fragment length polymorphism [RFLP (Liu et al, 1994)], random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), amplified fragment length polymorphism [AFLP (Devos et al, 1995)], sequence-tagged sites [STSs (Allouis et al, 2001)], simple sequence repeat [SSRs (Qi et al, 2004; Meena et al, 2020; Srivastava et al, 2020a)], single-stranded conformation polymorphism-SNP [SSCP-SNP (Bertin et al, 2005)], expressed sequence tag-derived simple sequence repeats [EST-SSRs (Senthilvel et al, 2008; Rajaram et al, 2013)], DArT array technology [DArTs (Senthilvel et al, 2010; Supriya et al, 2011)], conserved intron-specific primers [CISP
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