Finger millet is an ancient African cereal crop, domesticated 7000 years ago in Ethiopia, reaching India at 3000 BC. Finger millet is reported to be resistant to various fungal pathogens including Fusarium sp. We hypothesized that finger millet may host beneficial endophytes (plant-colonizing microbes) that contribute to the antifungal activity. Here we report the first isolation of endophyte(s...

Lipoxygenase-1 (LOX-1) protein provides defense against pests and pathogens and its presence have been positively correlated with plant resistance against pathogens. Linoleate is a known substrate of lipoxygenase and it induces necrosis leading to the accumulation of isoflavonoid phytoalexins in plant leaves. Therefore, it is of interest to study the structural features of LOX-1 from Finger mil...

Finger millet is an important cereal crop in eastern Africa and southern India with excellent grain storage quality and unique ability to thrive in extreme environmental conditions. Since negligible attention has been paid to improving this crop to date, the current study used Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies to develop both Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) and Single Nucleotide Polymo...

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn) is a staple food crop grown by subsistence farmers in the semi-arid tropics of South Asia and Africa. It remains highly valued by traditional farmers as it is nutritious, drought tolerant, short duration, and requires low inputs. Its continued propagation may help vulnerable farmers mitigate climate change. Unfortunately, the land area cultivated wi...

Uganda is dominated by agriculture with over 80 percent of the 24.6 million people involved in subsistence farming. The most important cereals are maize, finger millet and sorghum in that order. Finger millet is the second most important cereal in Uganda after maize and exceeding sorghum both in area and production. It is the staple food for over 50% of the country’s 24.6 million people and inc...

Nutritional insecurity is a major threat to the world's population that is highly dependent on cereals-based diet, deficient in micronutrients. Next to cereals, millets are the primary sources of energy in the semi-arid tropics and drought-prone regions of Asia and Africa. Millets are nutritionally superior as their grains contain high amount of proteins, essential amino acids, minerals, and vi...

Soluble and bound phenolic compounds were extracted from different varieties of millet types namely, finger millet, foxtail, and proso millet cultivated at dry and intermediate climatic zones in Sri Lanka. The extracts were examined for their total phenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content (TFC), and proanthocyanidin content (PC). The antioxidant activities were meassured by reducing powe...

Millets are extremely important in the African SAT (semi-arid tropics), produced in 18.50 million ha by 28 countries covering 30% of the continent. This is a significant 49% of the global millet area, with a production of 11.36 million tons by 1994. There are nine species which form major sources of energy and protein for about 130 million people in SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa). Among these, only f...

Finger millet is one of the small millets with high nutritive value. This crop is vulnerable to blast disease caused by Pyricularia grisea, which occurs annually during rainy and winter seasons. Leaf blast occurs at early crop stage and is highly damaging. Mapping of resistance genes and other quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for agronomic performance can be of great use for improving finger mill...

Millet is a cereal of enormous importance with potentials in the agricultural systems and food security but it constitutes a neglected agrobiodiversity. Soil borne pathogenic fungi could be possible culprit to millet cultivation in southwestern Nigeria. Therefore, this study investigates the pathogenic effect of isolated Fusarium species from soil on millet seedlings under greenhouse conditions...