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Improvement of millets in the post-genomic era

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Abstract

Millets are food and nutrient security crops in the semi-arid tropics of developing countries. Crop improvement using modern tools is one of the priority areas of research in millets. The whole-genome sequence (WGS) of millets provides new insight into understanding and studying the genes, genome organization and genomic-assisted improvement of millets. The WGS of millets helps to carry out genome-wide comparison and co-linearity studies among millets and other cereal crops. This approach might lead to the identification of genes underlying biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in millets. The available genome sequence of millets can be used for SNP identification, allele discovery, association and linkage mapping, identification of valuable candidate genes, and marker-assisted breeding (MAB) programs. Next generation sequencing (NGS) technology provides opportunities for genome-assisted breeding (GAB) through genomic selection (GS) and genome-wide association studies (GAWS) for crop improvement. Clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) genome editing (GE) system provides new opportunities for millet improvement. In this review, we discuss the details on the WGS available for millets and highlight the importance of utilizing such resources in the post-genomic era for millet improvement. We also draw inroads on the utilization of various approaches such as GS, GWAS, functional genomics, gene validation and GE for millet improvement. This review might be helpful for understanding the developments in the post-genomic era of millet improvement.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Rajagri College of Social Sciences, Kochi, Kerala for providing the research facilities and support.

Funding

This work was fnancially supported by Rajagiri College of Social Sciences (Autonomous), Kerala, India, under Seed Money for Faculty Minor Research.

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  1. Department of Biosciences, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, 683104, Kochi, Kerala, India

    T. P. Ajeesh Krishna, T. Maharajan &  S. Antony Ceasar

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  1. T. P. Ajeesh Krishna
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  2. T. Maharajan
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  3. S. Antony Ceasar
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TPAK, TM and SAC conceptualized and wrote the manuscript. SAC critically revised the manuscript for publication.

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Correspondence to S. Antony Ceasar.

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Ajeesh Krishna, T.P., Maharajan, T. & Ceasar, S.A. Improvement of millets in the post-genomic era. Physiol Mol Biol Plants 28, 669–685 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-022-01158-8

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