Unlocking Climate Resilience Through Omics in Underutilized Small Millets
摘要
Small millets, commonly as designated due to their small seed size, are regarded as climate resilient nutri-cereals, with superior carbon use efficient C4 system which aid in mitigating climate change-associated uncertainties. They are superior to principal food staples interms of high nutrition, low water requirement, resistance to biotic and abiotic stress and demand fewer inputs and amenable for cultivation under harsh soil/climate conditions. Small millets are also considered as health saviors with low glycemic index and are preferred as predominant alternative in the diet of common public with or without diabetics. Despite being the superior sources of climate resilience and nutrition, genetic enhancement and utility of small millets are hindered by dearth of well-characterized germplasm resources. Recent advancements in next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform opened up several OMICs platform in these crops also to some extent and hold greater promise for identification of pathway-candidate genes, development of molecular markers and precise mapping of QTLs for climate resilience/nutrition. Utilizing the NGS platform, foxtail millet, finger millet, proso millet and barnyard millet sequences were made available. The integration of omics tools, presents an exceptional opportunity to explore differentially expressed genes, proteins, and metabolites under diverse climatic conditions in small millets to develop climate smart cultivars. Recent advances in phenomics involving crop imaging systems paves a faster way for identification and utilization of climate resilience traits for crop improvement. We review the recent advancements in genetic resources, genomic resources and omics tools and their application in elucidation of tolerance to various abiotic stresses as climate resilient traits in small millets with the perspectives on developing climate smart ‘futuristic crops’ for marginal agriculture.