Breeding Kodo Millet for Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum L.) is grown both as food and fodder crop across the world and specifically in the arid regions of tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions. Their grain contains a variety of high-quality proteins, has high anti-oxidant activity and is also rich in fibre. Hence, these are preferred for diabetic patients. It is popular due to its excellent nutritional and climate-resilient features. Despite the numerous benefits of millets to humans, their productivity is limited due to multiple environmental constraints and impending climate change. The yield of these crops has been seriously jeopardized by the combined effects of heat and drought stress. Drought stress in millets affects yield at the seedling stage, while terminal drought has a great impact during the reproductive stage. Apart from these two, waterlogging and salinity stress cause many adverse effects on the growth and development of kodo millets. To combat the effects of multiple stresses that are associated with climate change, as well as to improve the millet production, it is necessary to develop high-yielding and stress-tolerant millet varieties. Several possible approaches are there to enhance the tolerance level of millets to different stress conditions as well as to boost the productivity. For this, there is a need for whole genome sequencing of all millets, including kodo millet as it will speed up genomic selection of superior millets through gene tagging, QTL mapping, marker-assisted selection, etc. Methods like PGPRs and CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to reduce the ill effects of biotic and abiotic stresses as well as to improve the productivity of millets.