Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XIV ConferenceJanuary 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
C Tom Hash1 , Arun Sharma2 , T Nepolean1 , S Senthilvel1
Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is a robust C4, diploid (2n=2x=14) grass cultivated for grain and stover under dryland conditions throughout the arid and semi-arid tropics and subtropics. In these marginal production environments, it provides the most reliable source of staple food grain, and feeds the world’s poorest people and their livestock. In more favorable areas, it is grown for green fodder and used as the mulch component in conservation tillage soybean production systems. It is the sixth most important cereal globally following maize, rice, wheat, barley and sorghum.
Pearl millet has been the subject of genetic research and applied crop improvement since at least the 1930s. Cytological approaches to genetic study of this crop failed repeatedly due to the unwillingness of developers of aneuploid stocks to share these with other researchers. Over the past 16 years, partnership-based development and application of genetic tools for marker-assisted breeding in pearl millet has advanced tremendously, producing suites of RFLP, STS, AFLP, SSR, and SSCP-SNP markers. Similarly, small BAC and EST resources were developed. The most important outcomes from this have been applications in genetic diversity assessment and QTL mapping for disease resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, and components of grain and stover yield and quality. These initial applications were accompanied by early attempts to use markers flanking QTLs as selection criteria in breeding programs, which have already borne fruit, as evidenced by release in 2005 of the first non-GM product of marker-assisted selection in India, pearl millet hybrid “HHB 67 Improved”.