Prospects of enhancing pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) productivity under drought environments of North-Western India through hybrids

Abstract

Pearl millet is valued for both grain and stover in crop livestock production system in the drought-prone arid and semi-arid regions of north-western India. In this work the performance of contemporary hybrids and composites of pearl millet were compared for grain and stover yields in drier zone of these regions. A total of 142 hybrids and 84 composites were evaluated in a combination of 94 environments from 1998 to 2009 in the stales of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana. Mean yield in test locations ranged from 611 kg/ha to 2351 kg/ha for grain and from 18.7 q/ha to 69.8 q/ha for stover. Hybrids yielded significantly higher grain than composites with an overall superiority of 25%. Earliness and ability to produce more panicles by hybrids appeared to contribute toward their higher grain yield. Hybrids had stover yield at par with composites. The data indicated that contemporary hybrids are inherently higher yielder than composites even under adverse conditions of arid and drier semi-arid regions. The population buffering mechanism of composites appeared not to give any advantage with respect to yield. Implications of these results are discussed in breeding pearl millet for drier zone of north-western India.