Recent Advancements in Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) Breeding for Quality and Yield Improvement

Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) is one of the important and oldest crops domesticated by humankind in China. It is a climate-smart crop inherently resilient to biotic and abiotic stresses, which led to its widespread across Europe and Asia during the Neolithic era. Besides, the crop is important among growers due to its extremely short life span and high efficiency of water use. Proso millet has a low glycemic index, gluten-free, and is rich in protein content among other millets. The lack of availability of appreciable genomic resources has slowed the crop improvement process. The draft proso millet genome sequence allows large-scale re-sequencing to investigate genetic resources and genetic diversity, leading to sequence-based breeding for quality and yield traits. Genome-wide association studies combined high-throughput genotyping and phenotyping to allow marker-trait association analysis to identify quality and yield responsive genes. The introduction of genomic selection and genome editing technologies, combined with recent advances in bioinformatics tools, has enabled a breakthrough in genomics-assisted breeding for the enhancement of yield and quality. This chapter focuses on the available genomic information, status, progress, prospects, and challenges of genome-assisted breeding to develop a road map for genetic improvement for quality (grain and protein quality, nutrient-enriched, tolerant for lodging, and non-shattering types) and yield improvement in proso millet, which is likely to play a tremendous role in improving global food and nutrition security under climate change and exponential population growth scenarios.