A study coordinated by an international consortium of France’s Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), along with Indian and Chinese researchers, has enabled the genome sequence for millet to be obtained for the first time. This discovery improves the understanding of the organization and evolution of the genome of this cereal, which provides food security for the poorest people in the world, according to the IRD press release. 

In addition, the finding provides new prospects for selecing or improving varieties of millet which may be better equipped to cope with climate change for almost 100 million people. The study’s results have been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. 

“Pearl millet is the staple crop of the driest area on earth. This research could potentially be of significance,” Yves Vigouroux, Director of Research at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)

Offering food security
Millet, also known as “pearl millet,” is a cereal that belongs to the family of small-seeded grasses, grown in the aridest areas on the planet in Africa, within the Sahel region and in Asia, especially in India. Suited to the dry conditions and relatively infertile soil, millet offers food security to almost 100 million people thanks to the high nutritional quality of its seeds (which contain between 8 percent and 19 percent protein.) It is also used to feed cattle and sheep.

As climatic models predict rising temperatures and an increase in the number of extreme climatic events, millet may play a key role in providing food security for the growing population of countries in the Sahel region, IRD notes. It adds that unlike rice, corn and wheat, for which there have been many sequencing studies, the international scientific community has until now shown relatively little interest in decoding and analyzing the millet genome.

Coordinated by IRD, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India and Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in China, the study published in Nature Biotechnology involved 63 researchers in ten countries.

The researchers identified a standard genome sequence for millet, containing more than 38,000 genes. They then sequenced the genome for close to 1,000 varieties of cultivated millet and their wild ancestors, in order to analyze their structure, genetic diversity and the evolution of the genome for this cereal.

The research meant that the team could trace the origin of millet domestication, found to have taken place almost 4,500 years ago at the border between Mali and Niger.

It highlighted genes that slow down the loss of water from the leaves (thus conserving hydration), as well as other genes related to withstanding dry conditions.

New opportunities
Genome sequencing opens up new perspectives for millet, a staple cereal for farming in Africa and beyond. This is because this newly acquired knowledge about the millet genome is going to enable the development of new varieties (cross-breeding, selection of genes of interest), which are better suited to rising temperatures and more resistant to pests, according to IRD.

This pioneering study provides a large quantity of information on the genes of the “neglected” cereal, IRD says. By decoding its genome, millet could see its production increase in the coming decades. This would supplement the production of other cereals perhaps less well equipped to cope with climate change, thus contributing to the food security of a worldwide population expected to exceed nine billion people by 2050.

“[Now] we are trying to decipher the genetic makeup of [the] adaptation of this crop to extreme climates,” adds Vigouroux of further research plans.