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

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/5088/
Http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1439-0523.2002.00657.x
 
Title Farmers' seed management practices open up new base populations for pearl millet breeding in a semi-arid zone of India
 
Creator Brocke, K Vom
Presterl, T
Christinck, A
Weltzien, E
Geiger, H H
 
Subject Millets
 
Description 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.
 
Publisher Blackwell Publishing
 
Date 2002
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
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Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/5088/1/plantBreed121%281%2936-42.pdf
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