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QTLs Controlling Yield and Stover Quality Traits in Pearl Millet

OAR@ICRISAT

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/1122/
 
Title QTLs Controlling Yield and Stover Quality Traits in Pearl Millet
 
Creator Nepolean, T
Blummel, M
Raj, A G B
Rajaram, V
Senthilvel, S
Hash, C T
 
Subject Millets
 
Description Stover of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.]
is a major source of dry-season maintenance rations for
livestock in traditional smallholder crop-livestock production
systems on the semi-arid margins of the Thar
desert in South Asia and in the Sahelian region of West
and Central Africa (Renard 1997).
Crop residues, especially those produced in marginal
environments, have poor nutritional value. Although
nutritional supplements can enhance the feed quality of
crop residues, they may not provide a long-term solution
because of difficulties in adapting them to local conditions,
limited availability, and expense. Genetic enhancement
of crop-residue nutritional quality is an alternative approach
that can naturally, cost-efficiently, and permanently
improve productivity of these crop-livestock systems.
Expression of stover quality traits in pearl millet is
complex (Hash et al. 2003), and selection based on
conventional breeding methods is potentially difficult
considering that conventional wet-lab analysis of nutritional
value is tedious and time-consuming. Identification of
genomic regions associated with stover quality traits
would permit application of marker-assisted backcrossing
(MABC) to improve the feed value of crop residues of
elite hybrids and their parental lines.
Preliminary assessment of genetic variability of stover
quality traits and stover yield in pearl millet has demonstrated
the presence of considerable variation for cell wall
digestibility and stover yield (Blümmel et al. 2003). The
pearl millet mapping population based on the cross
ICMB 841 × 863B used in this study is one of several
developed for drought tolerance. It exhibits only limited
variation for flowering time and plant height while varying
substantially for many other plant traits and maintaining a
reasonable degree of agronomic eliteness. Parents of this
population exhibit inherent variation for many stover
quality traits, so this population provides ample scope for
quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping and markerassisted
selection (MAS) (Hash et al. 2003). The present
study had the following objectives: mapping QTLs for
stover nutritional quality, assessing relationships amongstover yield components and quality traits, and selecting target QTLs for MABC. This is the first detailed report of QTLs mapped for pearl millet stover ruminant nutritional quality traits.
 
Publisher International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
 
Date 2006
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/1122/1/QTLControllingYield.pdf
Nepolean, T and Blummel, M and Raj, A G B and Rajaram, V and Senthilvel, S and Hash, C T (2006) QTLs Controlling Yield and Stover Quality Traits in Pearl Millet. Journal of SAT Agricultural Research, 2 (1). 4pp.. ISSN 0973-3094