Pearl millet improvement

Project Leader: Bettina IG Haussmann, ICRISAT, Niamey, Niger

Goal

To produce the best possible varieties of pearl millet that can combact pests and diseases under the harshest of environments.

Pearl millet is one of the most important cereals for food security in West Africa. It is grown by the poorest people in the harshest environments that are characterized by frequent drought events and poor soil fertility. The crop has relatively high nutritional values for a cereal. Its grain has higher protein and fat than wheat or rice, and its amino acid balance is better than that of wheat and polished rice. It also digests slowly and so staves off hunger longer. In West Africa, it is usually eaten as porridge.

In the past, ICRISAT Sahelian Center in cooperation with NARS scientists from the region has developed a number of improved pearl millet cultivars, and these are grown to a certain extent in several regions of West Africa (Fig. 1). But adoption is slower than expected, for many reasons, with the main hindrances being: tradition, lack of information, and no access to improved seed. These cultivars are currently made more popular (Fig. 2) and farmers are trained in producing seed while maintaining varietal identity.

    
Fig. 1. West African Farmer being proud of           Fig. 2. ICRISAT technician Hamadou Adamou
harvest of the improved cultivar SOSAT.               (middle) presenting improved pearl millet cultivars to                                                                          farmers at a seed fair in Famalé (Niger).

In march 2005 the arrival of a new scientist, Bettina Haussmann has made it possible to re-orient the pearl millet breeding program towards a more farmer-participatory approach. Farmers will now be involved in different steps of the breeding program, from priority setting to evaluation of the final products and seed production. At the same time, comparative advantages of both, on-station and on-farm work are being combined to achieve maximal progress from selection. This approach is expected to reduce the time span between variety development and adoption.

Pearl millet reveals a huge genetic diversity in West Africa (Fig. 3): there is tremendous variability for date of flowering and maturity, length of the panicle, leaf, grain and stover characteristics, resistance to drought, pests and diseases, and nutritional value. An efficient employment of genetic diversity is key to any crop improvement program. Cooperation of ICRISAT with the NARS pearl

Fig. 3. Pearl millet diversity for panicle characteristics.

millet breeders from Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria are envisaged to exploit this diversity more efficiently in both breeding of open-pollinated cultivars and in hybrid development. The aims are:

1. To develop more heterozygous cultivars based on the concept of heterotic pools, and
2. To make the available pearl millet diversity more accessible to farmers, develop new trait combinations and select together with farmers those new cultivars that are best adapted to farmer's production systems, especially in the light of climatic change, increasing soil degradation and malnutrition. The approach will be combined with integrated pest, water and soil fertility management for a more sustainable production increase.

In addition to the classical crop improvement activities as mentioned above, close contacts are maintained with the scientific community leading genomic research in pearl millet and other cereals worldwide. Advances in biotechnology could help increasing resistance of pearl millet to pests, diseases, and possibly also drought, but we are still in an infant stage. A lot of research in this context is needed to come up with products that will help poor farmers in the Sahel.

Targeted research projects are being developed or have already been submitted to potential donors, and we hope to be able to realize the research objectives described above from 2006 onwards.