Farmers' seed management practices open up new base populations for pearl millet breeding in a semi-arid zone of India

Brocke, K Vom and Presterl, T and Christinck, A and Weltzien, E and Geiger, H H (2002) Farmers' seed management practices open up new base populations for pearl millet breeding in a semi-arid zone of India. Plant Breeding, 121 (1). pp. 36-42. ISSN 0179-9541

PDF - Published Version Restricted to ICRISAT users only Download (103kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Farmers in western Rajasthan (northwest India) produce and maintain their landrace populations of pearl millet through their own distinct seed management practices. The objective of this study was to characterize morphological and agronomic variability of different traits between and within three farmers' populations using quantitative genetic parameters. Populations examined were a typical landrace and two modified landraces, which were generated through farmer introgression of modern cultivars with different levels of subsequent selection. From these three populations, 100 random full-sib progenies were evaluated in field trials at two locations in western Rajasthan (Mandor and Jodhpur) over two years (1998 and 1999). Significant genetic variation existed within the three populations. Estimates of heritability were moderate to high for all observed traits. Predicted selection response for grain yield across environments was 1.6% for the typical landrace and 2.2% for both the modified landraces. Results suggest that the introgression of modern cultivars into landraces had increased the genetic diversity. Therefore, farmers' current breeding activities could open up new resources for plant breeding programmes aiming at plant improvement for the semi-arid zones of India.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Pennisetum glaucum;diversity;farmers' seed management;genetic gain;genetic resources;introgression;landraces;participatory plant breeding
Subjects:	Mandate crops > Millets
Depositing User:	Library ICRISAT
Date Deposited:	28 Dec 2011 08:30
Last Modified:	01 Jan 2014 09:27
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/5088
Official URL:	Http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1439-0523.2002.00657.x
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
Acknowledgement:	he authors thank the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) for ®nancial support of this project through the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). The authors acknowledge the commitments and contributions of farmers from Aagolai and S. Bai who made this work possible. The authors also thank Dr S. K. Nein, M. B. Ahmed, and R. Reddy for their excellent technical support and advice, Dr P. J. Bramel-Cox, Dr C. T. Hash (ICRISAT), Dr D. C. Bhandari (NBPGR) and Dr O. P. Yadav (CASRI) for valuable instruction, and A. McGowan for English editing. The provision of land by NBPGR, RAU and CASRI is gratefully acknowledged
Links:	Author

View Statistics

Actions (login required)

View Item