Little millet that are big on nutrition and yield identified at ICRISAT

A team of researchers has zeroed in on little millet germplasm with high nutrients, high yield and biomass potential following analysis of the crop’s 200 landraces conserved at ICRISAT’s Genebank in India. These landraces hold the key to developing nutritious and high-yielding varieties of the crop, which can prove significant for food systems in drylands facing changing climate, the scientists say.

The ICRISAT Genebank conserves 473 accessions of little millet landraces collected from different parts of India, and a few from Cameroon, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Researchers examined 200 of these for over two years and characterized them for nutrition (calcium, iron, zinc and protein), yield and biomass. They found 10 accessions with promising seed weight, 15 with high grain yield potential, 15 with high biomass yield potential and 30 with consistently high grain nutrients.