African and Asian origin pearl millet populations: Genetic diversity pattern and its association with yield heterosis

Abstract

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is a staple food crop of arid and semi‐arid regions of Asia and Africa. Forty‐five pearl millet populations of Asian and African origin were assessed for genetic diversity using 29 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The SSR‐based clustering and structure analyses showed that Asian origin–Asian bred (As‐As) and African origin–African bred (Af‐Af) populations were distributed across seven clusters, indicating no strong relationship among populations with their geographical origin. Most of the African origin–Asian bred (Af‐As) populations had a higher average number of alleles per locus than As‐As or Af‐Af populations, and the majority of them clustered separately from As‐As or Af‐Af populations, indicating that introgression of African origin breeding materials led to the development of new gene pools adapted to the Asian region. Fourteen populations representing seven clusters were crossed according to a diallel mating design to generate 91 population hybrids (seeds of direct and reciprocal crosses were mixed) and evaluated at three locations in 2016. All the 91 hybrids when partitioned into three groups based on genetic distance (GD) between parental combinations (low, moderate, and high), revealed no correlation between GD and panmictic midparent heterosis in any of the groups, indicating that grain yield heterosis cannot be predicted based on GD. Two population hybrids (GB 8735 × ICMP 87307 and Sudan I × Ugandi) exhibited high levels of yield heterosis over standard checks and can be further utilized using different breeding schemes to develop high‐yielding pearl millet cultivars.

Genetic Gains in Pearl Millet in India: Insights Into Historic Breeding Strategies and Future Perspective

“…A range of germplasm material from India and Africa with diverse phenotypic characteristics, such as tillering, panicle size, earliness, grain size, grain color, and so on, was strategically exploited to diversify the genetic base of both seed and restorer parents (Andrews and Anand Kumar, 1996 ; Rai et al, 2009a ; Yadav et al, 2012c ; Patil et al, 2020 ). In the last four decades, hybrid breeding has received a very high priority in India using genetically diverse parental lines targeting various production ecologies that have helped to intensify the genetic gains (Rai et al, 2009a ; Yadav et al, 2012a ).…”

“…The role of adapted germplasm has also been emphasized for drought breeding as the measured performance under drought stress is largely a result of adaptation to stress conditions (Yadav et al, 2009 , 2012c ). Hybridization of adapted landraces with elite genetic material creates new gene combinations that lead to amalgamating of adaptation to stress environments and high productivity (Presterl and Weltzien, 2003 ; Yadav and Rai, 2011 , Patil et al, 2020 ). Genome regions underlying drought tolerance-related traits have been identified and mapped (Yadav et al, 2002 , 2004 ; Serba and Yadav, 2016 ).…”

Strategy of multiple selection indices for discrimination of potential genotypes and associated traits for yield improvement in pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.]

“…It is one of Sub-Saharan Africa's and tropical India's most widely consumed staple food crops (Fuller et al, 2021). Pearl millet is the sixth most important cereals crop in the world after wheat, rice, maize, barley and sorghum (FAO, 2020 andPatil et al, 2020) and India is one of the world's largest producers of pearl millet, where pearl millet is the fourth most extensively cultivated crop after rice, wheat and maize.…”

Understanding Heterosis, Genetic Effects, and Genome Wide Associations for Forage Quantity and Quality Traits in Multi-Cut Pearl Millet

“…Exploitation of heterosis in pearl millet is considered as an easy tool with its protogynous nature of flowering and availability of stable cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) system ( Burton, 1965 ). Several studies have been conducted to assess the hybrid performance and heterosis in the grain type parents/populations in pearl millet ( Pucher et al, 2016 ; Gupta et al, 2018 , 2020 ; Sattler et al, 2019 ; Singh and Gupta, 2019 ; Patil et al, 2020 ; Sattler and Haussmann, 2020 ; Dutta et al, 2021 ). No research has been undertaken to assess the magnitude of heterosis exclusively for the forage yield and quality traits in multi-cut pearl millet.…”