Abstract
Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] stands as a climate-smart, sixth most important cereal crop globally. This resilient nutri-cereal is extensively grown by the poor smallholder farmers of the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and serves as a grain and stover crop. Its cultivation spans approximately 31 million ha globally. Major pearl millet-producing countries include India in South Asia, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania in Eastern Africa and Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali in Western and Central Africa. Pearl millet holds the potential to curtail the challenges posed by climate change, offering food, nutrition, and economic security to more than 500 million people in the world’s poor and nutritionally insecure farming communities in arid regions. Globally, pearl millet production has significantly improved over the past 15 years, mainly due to awareness among people about its nutritional attributes, adoption of high-yielding hybrids, accessibility to improved genetic and genomic tools, and increase in the pearl millet production area in India and West Africa. Good-quality genome sequencing and re-sequencing data of numerous lines together with advanced genomic tools may help in the genomic dissection of different tolerance traits, yield, and offer a good prospect to further enhance the climate-resilient and nutritional attributes of pearl millet. Hence, systematic efforts are needed for the genetic enhancement of this crop to develop superior hybrids/varieties using several omics approaches. This book chapter provides an overview of developments made in pearl millet genetic and genomic resources and their effective exploitation for comprehensive improvement of this next-generation nutri-cereal.