Author : War War Lin Aung

Summary : Exploration of genetic diversity coupled with evaluation of trait-specific accessions provides the essential framework for advancing yield and nutritional enhancement in pearl millet. The present study evaluated 67 pearl millet accessions during the 2023 and 2024 pre-monsoon and post-monsoon growing seasons to assess the genetic diversity and identify trait-specific accessions for grain nutritional content, grain yield, and fodder yield in a randomized complete block design with two replications. The morphological traits were analyzed, along with four grain nutritional traits such as crude protein, calcium, iron and zinc content. Significant variations were observed among the accessions for all traits. Narrow phenotypic-genotypic coefficient of variation gaps indicated stable trait expression with limited environment influence. High broad-sense heritability and genetic advance as percent of mean for stem diameter, number of tillers per plant, number of productive tillers per plant, seed weight per spike, green fodder yield per plant, dry fodder yield per plant, and grain nutritional traits suggested that direct selection would be effective for genetic - improvement of those traits. Cluster analysis grouped the accessions into five distinct clusters per season, revealing wide genetic divergence and identifying potential parents for improvement. Grain nutritional analysis identified ICH-220 (pre-monsoon season) and ICMS-7845 (post-monsoon season) as high crude protein accessions while SSC-K-78 (pre-monsoon season) and Sat San Konelun (post-monsoon season) consistently recorded high levels of calcium content under both seasons. Two accessions, ICMH-81824 (pre-monsoon season) and ICMS-8004 (post-monsoon season), exhibited elevated iron content, while ICMV-82132 demonstrated stable grain zinc content across both growing seasons. Path coefficient analysis showed that seed weight per spike and 1000-seed weight were the important yield attributing traits with the strong positive direct effect on grain yield per plant, and days to heading, plant height and stem diameter are the key traits for enhancing green fodder yield per plant. ICMS-7845 and ICMP-87101 demonstrated superior and stable grain yield and Pearl-4, Pearl-3 and ICMS-7835-S displayed high green fodder yield across multiple growing seasons. The accession, ICMV-82113, emerged as a dual-purpose accession with high grain-fodder performance. These trait-specific accessions provide valuable genetic resources for breeding nutrient-enhanced, high-yielding cultivars and for advancing and climate-resilient pearl millet breeding.