The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics conserves 335 accessions of Pennisetum glaucum subsp. monodii originated in 13 countries. In the present study, the collection was evaluated and assessed for diversity and geographical gaps. A wide variation was observed in the collection for total tillers per plant (16 to 609), productive tillers per plant (12 to 368), leaf l...

By roughly 8,000 calendar years before the present (calBP), hunter-gatherers across a broad swath of north China had begun small-scale farming of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica). According to traditional wisdom, this early millet farming evolved from the intensive hunter-gatherer adaptation represented by the late Pleistocene microblade tradition of nor...

Millets are annual grasses and grow well under the marginal conditions of soil fertility and moisture, which provide staple food for millions of people. Millets have strong, deep rooting systems and short life cycles. Breeding research in millets, habitually engages different species, cultivars, and varieties. This makes an immense challenge to maintain the different varieties and their identif...

A field experiment was conducted during kharif, 2014 at Tirupati with four foxtail millet varieties (SiA 3088, SiA 3085, SiA 3156 and Srilaxmi) in combination with three nitrogen levels (0, 25, 50 kg N ha -1 ). The results of the experiment revealed that among the four foxtail millet varieties, SiA 3085 recorded the higher grain and straw yield. Application of 50 kg N ha -1 markedly improved th...

The growing public awareness of nutrition and health care research substantiates the potential of phytochemicals such as polyphenols and dietary fiber on their health beneficial properties. Hence, there is in need to identify newer sources of neutraceuticals and other natural and nutritional materials with the desirable functional characteristics. Finger millet (Eleusine coracana), one of the m...

Foxtail millet is one of the world's oldest cultivated crops. It has been adopted as a model organism for providing a deeper understanding of plant biology. In this study, 45 simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers of Setaria italica were developed. These markers showing polymorphism were screened in 223 samples from 12 foxtail millet populations around Taiwan. The most common dinucleotide and tr...

Millets are annual grasses and grow well under the marginal conditions of soil fertility and moisture, which provide staple food for millions of people. Millets have strong, deep rooting systems and short life cycles. Breeding research in millets, habitually engages different species, cultivars, and varieties. This makes an immense challenge to maintain the different varieties and their identif...

Endophytic Trichoderma hamatum UoM 13 isolated from pearl millet roots was evaluated for its efficiency to suppress downy mildew disease. Under laboratory conditions, T. hamatum seed treatment significantly enhanced pearl millet seed germination and seedling vigor. T. hamatum seed treatment resulted in systemic and durable immunity against pearl millet downy mildew disease under greenhouse and ...

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.) is a staple food and a drought-tolerant cereal well adapted to Sub-Saharan Africa agro-ecosystems. An important diversity of pearl millet landraces has been widely conserved by farmers and therefore could help copping with climate changes and contribute to future food security. Hence, characterizing its genetic diversity and population structure can...

The prominent attributes of foxtail millet (Setaria italica L.) including its small genome size, short life cycle, inbreeding nature, and phylogenetic proximity to various biofuel crops have made this crop an excellent model system to investigate various aspects of architectural, evolutionary and physiological significances in Panicoid bioenergy grasses. After release of its whole genome sequen...