This study explores farmer acceptance and valuation of a biofortified staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization. We focus on the hypothetical introduction of a high-iron pearl millet variety in Maharashtra, India, where pearl millet is among the most important staple crops. A choice experiment is used to investigate farmer preferences for and trade-offs among vario...

The purpose of this study was to compare in vitro digestibility, protein distribution patterns, and amino acid composition of pearl millet with other major cereals. Digestibility values for the pearl millet varieties were higher than that of sorghum and comparable to that of maize. In contrast to sorghum, digestibility of pearl millet and maize did not decrease significantly upon cooking. Prote...

Pearl millet and soybean flour were used in this study. Investigation showed that the major fraction of pearl millet protein was the prolamin followed by globulin and glutelin, while that of soybean was the globulin followed by glutelin and lesser amounts of albumin and prolamin. Cooking of pearl millet or soybean was found to decrease the globulin and true-prolamin fractions, while the prolami...

BACKGROUND During the Neolithic revolution, early farmers altered plant development to domesticate crops. Similar traits were often selected independently in different wild species; yet the genetic basis of this parallel phenotypic evolution remains elusive. Plant architecture ranks among these target traits composing the domestication syndrome. We focused on the reduction of branching which oc...

We report an Ac-like sequence from pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and deletion derivative Ac-like sequences from pearl millet and another grass species, Bambusa multiplex. Sequence relationships between the pearl millet and maize Ac elements suggest that Ac/Ds transposable-element family is ancient. Further, the sequence identity between the Bambusa Ac-like sequence and maize Ac implies that...

The objective of this experiment was to assess the effects of malting, extrusion and a combination of both processes on the physical and functional properties of the pearl millet flour (PMF) and pearl millet based instant beverage powder (PMIBP) produced. PMF and PMIBP were prepared by malting, extrusion and a combination of malting and extrusion cooking from two different varieties of pearl mi...

Pearl millet is one of the most important small-grained C4 Panicoid crops with a large genome size (∼2352 Mb), short life cycle and outbreeding nature. It is highly resilient to areas with scanty rain and high temperature. Pearl millet is a nutritionally superior staple crop for people inhabiting hot, drought-prone arid and semi-arid regions of South Asia and Africa where it is widely grown and...

PEARL MILLET Pearl millet is one of the two major crops grown to feed people living in the semi-arid, low input dryland agriculture regions of Africa and southeast Asia. People in northern Nambia are almost entirely dependent on pearl millet for food. Four countries in the Sahel of Africa, with a total population of 38 million, depend on pearl millet to provide over 1,000 calories per person pe...

Pearl millet is used mainly as a temporary forage crop in the southern United States. A new pearl millet hybrid has potential as a major grain crop in the United States. The effects of nematodes, irrigation, a nematicide, and nitrogen rates on a new pearl millet grain hybrid, HGM-100, and nematode population changes were determined in a 2-year study. Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne incognita r...

Complete uniparental chromosome elimination occurs in several interspecific hybrids of plants. We studied the mechanisms underlying selective elimination of the paternal chromosomes during the development of wheat (Triticum aestivum) x pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) hybrid embryos. All pearl millet chromosomes were eliminated in a random sequence between 6 and 23 d after pollination. Parenta...