Millets and Pseudo Cereals: Genetic Resources and Breeding Advancements

by Mohar Singh PhD, Salej Sood

Overview

Millets and Pseudo Cereals is the first comprehensive resource to focus on the potential crop improvements through genetic enhancements.

The choice of food crop for a region is primarily determined by the conditions of climate and soil. Once labelled as orphan crops, millets and pseudo-cereals are now known as miracle grains due to their adaptation to harsh conditions and high nutritional quality. Small millets and pseudo-cereals are now seen to occupy special niches through their ability to adapt to challenging conditions. These crops have a comparative advantage in marginal lands where they withstand stress conditions and contribute to sustainable production. They also contribute to the diversity-richness and production stability of agro-ecosystems. Millets include sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, little millet and kodo millet while the other group which are not cereals but consumed as cereals and generally referred as pseudo-cereals comprises of grain amaranths, buckwheat and chenopods.

Millets and Pseudo Cereals presents current information on the genetic architecture of important economic traits and the genomic resources for gene enabled breeding. This compilation contains information on the global status, available germplasm resources, nutritional value, breeding advancements, genomics applications and sustainability of agriculture through millets and pseudo-cereals cultivation.

This book is a valuable resource for those conducting research and exploring new areas for advancing crop genetic understanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780128200896
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	09/21/2020
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.88(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr Mohar Singh currently works as Principal Scientist (Plant Genetic Resources) at ICAR- National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources Regional Station, Shimla India. He received his PhD degree in Plant Breeding from Himachal Pradesh Agricultural University Palampur, India followed by DSc from Himachal Pradesh University Shimla India. He is working on genetic and genomic resources of pulses, pseudo cereals and cereals including their crop wild relatives and landraces foe diversity analysis using next generation technologies, which resulted into identification of useful traits against nutritional and major biotic and abiotic stresses including agronomic improvement related characters, some which have been introgressed into the cultivated backgrounds for diversification of cultivated gene pool. He has published more than 120 research papers in journals of national and international repute and also holds three textbooks and eight edited books to his credit published by Elsevier Insight, Academic Press and Springer, among others.

Dr Salej Sood has made significant contributions in the genetic improvement of small millets and pseudo-cereals through conventional and molecular breeding approaches for the past 9 years. In finger millet he has developed six early and medium maturing, blast resistant high yielding varieties for all finger millet growing states of the country. He characterized the global finger millet and barnyard millet germplasm for agronomic and nutritional traits and registered one genetic stock with high calcium content. He identified new SSRs through cross-transferability studies for genetic diversity and association mapping in both finger millet and barnyard millet. He has identified putative SSRs governing blast resistance in finger millet for the first time. Through genotyping by sequencing of finger millet diverse collection, he for the first time identified SNPs linked to grain yield and its components, calcium content and protein content. He worked in several DST and ICAR funded projects for genetic improvement of small millets. He has also contributed in the potato breeding programme through marker assisted selection of parental lines and selection of hybrids for multiple disease resistance. He is recipient of NAAS associateship 2019, Endeavour Research Fellowship 2018 and several Institutional and other research awards. He has published more than 60 research papers in peer reviewed high rating journals.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

Salej Sood and Mohar Singh

Chapter 2: GLOBAL PRODUCTION, DEMAND AND SUPPLY

Ajay Kumar Chandra, Rahul Chandora, Salej Sood and Nikhil Malhotra

Chapter 3: GENETIC RESOURCES: COLLECTION, CHARACTERIZATION, CONSERVATION AND DOCUMENTATION

D C Joshi, R P Meena and Rahul Chandora

Chapter 4: ORIGIN, DOMESTICATION AND SPREAD

R.P. Joshi, A.K. Jain, Nikhil Malhotra and Madhulata Kumari

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6: MOLECULAR ADVANCEMENTS FOR YIELD AND QUALITY

Lalit Arya, Monika Singh, Manjusha Verma, Mamta Singh, Supriya Babasaheb Aglawe

Chapter 7: BIOTIC STRESSES AND THEIR MANAGEMENT

A Nagaraja, B.S. Chethna, and A.K. Jain

Chapter 8: DROUGHT ADAPTATION: APPROCHES FOR CROP IMPROVEMENT

Y.A. Nanja Reddy, Y.N. Priya Reddy, V. Ramya, L.S. Suma, A.B. Narayana Reddy and S. Sanjeev Krishna

Chapter 9: NUTRITIONAL QUALITY AND HEALTH BENEFITS

N.G. Malleshi, Aparna Agarwal, Apoorv Tiwari and Salej Sood

Chapter 10: PROCESSING, VALUE ADDITION AND HEALTH BENEFITS

Krishan Datt Sharma, Babita Sharma and Harpreet Kaur Saini

Chapter 11: POLICY ANALYSIS AND STRATEGIES

B. Dayakar Rao, Dinesh TM, Anuradha and Sri Devi Nune

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Establishes foundational understanding of the pseudo cereals and their potential in addressing global food security