Foxtail millet: a model crop for genetic and genomic studies in bioenergy grasses

Abstract

Foxtail millet is one of the oldest domesticated diploid C₄ Panicoid crops having a comparatively small genome size of approximately 515 Mb, short life cycle, and inbreeding nature. Its two species, Setaria italica (domesticated) and Setaria viridis (wild progenitor), have characteristics that classify them as excellent model systems to examine several aspects of architectural, evolutionary, and physiological importance in Panicoid grasses especially the biofuel crops such as switchgrass and napiergrass. Foxtail millet is a staple crop used extensively for food and fodder in parts of Asia and Africa. In its long history of cultivation, it has been adapted to arid and semi-arid areas of Asia, North Africa, South and North America. Foxtail millet has one of the largest collections of cultivated as well as wild-type germplasm rich with phenotypic variations and hence provides prospects for association mapping and allele-mining of elite and novel variants to be incorporated in crop improvement programs. Most of the foxtail millet accessions can be primarily abiotic stress tolerant particularly to drought and salinity, and therefore exploiting these agronomic traits can enhance its efficacy in marker-aided breeding as well as in genetic engineering for abiotic stress tolerance. In addition, the release of draft genome sequence of foxtail millet would be useful to the researchers worldwide in not only discerning the molecular basis of biomass production in biofuel crops and the methods to improve it, but also for the introgression of beneficial agronomically important characteristics in foxtail millet as well as in related Panicoid bioenergy grasses.

Keywords::

• Panicoid
• Setaria
• abiotic stress
• C₄ photosynthesis
• germplasm
• genome sequence
• male sterility
• marker-aided breeding

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their constructive comments. Manoj Prasad highly appreciates the support and encouragement from Prof. Akhilesh Kumar Tyagi (Director, NIPGR) and Prof. Arun Kumar Sharma (Honorary Prof., Dept. of Botany, Calcutta University, India).

Declaration of interest

This study was supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India, New Delhi and core grant from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR). Dr. Charu Lata and Dr. Sarika Gupta acknowledge the award of INSPIRE Faculty (Grant No. IFA-11LSPA-01) and DST-Young Scientist Fellowships (Grant No. SR/FT/LS-152/2008), from DST, Govt. of India, New Delhi.