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Climate change is connected to many undesirable aspects which may strongly affect agricultural production in the future, not only in the Czech Republic but also in other countries in Central Europe. The most serious risks with the main impacts on agricultural production are the frequency and intensity of occurrence of extreme events. Problems caused by drought and its impact on agricultural production are starting to be serious and urgent. One of the solutions is using the drought-tolerant/resistant species and/or varieties more adaptable to water stress. Sorghum and foxtail millet might be the solution for Czech conditions. They can provide good yields even in dry periods. This study discusses grain quality of foxtail millet and biomass quality in the case of sorghum. In addition, the benefits of cultivation of these two species and current knowledge from a scientific point of view are summarised here.

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The diversity and genetic relationships in 173 sacha inchi samples were analyzed using ISSR markers. Thirty ISSR primers were used, only 8 showed variability in tested samples. ISSR fragments ranged from 200 to 2500 bp. The mean number of bands per primer was 12 and the average number of polymorphic bands per primer was 11. The lowest percentages of polymorphic bands (27%), gene diversity (0.103), and Shannon’s information index (0.15) were exhibited by the Santa Lucia population, which was also geographically most distant. This fact may be attributed to a very small size of this group. In contrast, the Dos de Mayo population exhibited the highest percentage of polymorphic bands (78%), and the Santa Cruz population the highest Nei’s gene diversity index (0.238) and Shannon’s information index (0.357). The obtained level of genetic variability was 36% among tested populations and 64% within populations. Although the diversity indices were low, a cluster analysis revealed 8 clusters containing mainly samples belonging to individual populations. Principal coordinate analysis clearly distinguished Chumbaquihui, Pucallpa, Dos de Mayo, and Aguas de Oro populations, the others were intermixed. The obtained results indicated the level of genetic diversity present in this location of Peru, although it is influenced by anthropological aspects and independent on the geographical distances.

In this study, the genetic diversity and relationships among eight millet genera were investigated by molecular and morphological data analyses. Sixty-nine millet accessions were analysed by using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers, and evaluated for morphological traits. Eight AFLP primer pairs were amplified successfully and 779 bands were scored for all accessions, with a high level of polymorphism detected. Nei’s genetic distance among all accessions varied from 0.0123 to 0.4246 and the Shannon’s index was estimated at 0.9708. The neighbour joining tree, using the unweighted neighbour-joining method and Dice’s dissimilarity coefficient, was constructed. The AFLP markers revealed the close relatedness between the Eragrostis and Panicum genera, whereas the greatest distance was found the Pennisetum and Echinochloa genera. Cluster analysis based on the AFLP profiles revealed that the majority of accessions of a given millet genus tend to group together. Clustering from morphological data allocated individuals into three main clusters with high variation. The genetic variability found between the analysed accessions was weakly negatively correlated (r = –0.074) with their morphological attributes. However, high molecular and morphological variability indicated that this collection includes rich and valuable plant materials for millet breeding.