Breeding Finger Millet for Abiotic Stress Tolerance: Strategies and Challenges

The term “millet” refers to a varied group of small-seeded annual C4 panicoid grasses, the biomass of which is used as feed and the seeds as food. A vital climate-resilient nutrimillet with a wealth of elite genes and alleles is finger millet. The most effective and long-term tactics for increasing abiotic stress resistance in millet crops could be found in advanced biotechnology applications, like “omics” approaches. Abiotic stress tolerance-boosting strategies for millet crops could be discovered in cutting-edge biotechnology applications like “omics” techniques. An enhanced breeding method called genomics-assisted breeding takes into account both phenotypic selection and genetic information at the same time when creating phenotypes also can contribute to the abiotic stress tolerant variety development of the specie. In addition, application of novel technologies viz. gene manipulation technologies, tissue culture techniques, genetic diversity assessments, and germplasm conservation techniques can contribute to the enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance capacity of finger millet. In this chapter is discussing the various research approaches that have been focused to improve abiotic stress tolerance in finger millet. Also, this chapter provides the specifics of the phenomic and genomic methods used to improve finger millet.