ETHNOBOTANICAL AND AGROMORPHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PEARL MILLET [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] ACCESSION FROM SOUTH OF CHAD

Abstract

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is one of the most important staple cereals in the semiarid tropics, adapted to very harsh rain-fed conditions. The present study was conducted in South of Chad in two Province where twelve pearl millet accessions were collected and assessed in Bébédjia (9°55'N and 15°8'E) during the rainy season of 2017 to evaluate the genetic diversity. Farmers traditionally used the spike shape, accession's origin and animal name to classify name of pearl millet accession. Qualitative evaluation showed that pearl millet landraces had dominance of cylindrical-shape and threshing with the touch spike, hexagonal shape and grey colored seed with the endosperm mostly corneous. All traits assessed except total tiller per plant revealed high significant difference (p<0.001) between twelve landraces. Heritability was high for all traits with high genetic advance of percentage of mean was observed for all traits except total tillers, plant height, days to flowering and thousand grain weight suggesting that these traits are governed by additive gene action and possibility of improving these traits through selection. Positive correlation of grain weight with number of days to flowering indicates that indirect selection of simply inherited agronomic traits can assist in effective selection for grain yield.