1 ICRISAT Happenings March 2017 1739 Newsletter Happenings March 2017, No. 1739 Feature Stories Focusing on sorghum as health food and forage S ciensts at ICRISAT-India were encouraged to focus on developing high-Zn sorghum lines for processed foods and also sorghum variees as forage with higher digesbility. From tradional uses of sorghum for food, feed, starch and alcohol, the market demand is gradually shiſting towards sorghum to be used as high-quality forage and as a health food. This was the key message at the Sorghum Sciensts Field Day recently held at ICRISAT-India. At the plenary session, parcipants called for introducing new concepts in post-rainy sorghum parental lines and hybrids development. They recommended a greater focus on forage research, parcularly single-cross forage hybrids with higher digesbility. Representaves from the processing industry requested a supply of high-Zn sorghum lines from ICRISAT for developing improved processed foods for various commercial end uses. Parcipants also called for retaining the stover yield in genotypes of both rainy and post-rainy season sorghum while improving grain yields. Dr Vilas A Tonapi, Director, Indian Instute of Millets Research, called for development of all-season hybrids to maximize sorghum adopon rates and crop producvity. Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT, urged the sciensts to increase breeding efficiency in product development by sharing materials, best pracces, locaons and knowledge. He suggested that sciensts migrate their data to the Breeding Management System for efficient storage and ulizaon. The field day was conducted under the aegis of the Sorghum Hybrid Parents Research Consorum (HPRC), which has been operaonal at ICRISAT for the past 17 years. HPRC partners with private sector seed companies in hybrid culvar development, seed producon and markeng of hybrid seeds. Ten companies from Asia, Africa and South America are currently members of the consorum. The Sorghum Sciensts Field Day was held on 20-21 February at ICRISAT-India and was aended by 72 members. Parcipants at the field day included 25 members from the public sector, 20 from private sector (including a breeder from Seed Co Limited, the largest seed company in Africa), seven researchers from various ICRISAT-Africa locaons, a five-member high-level delegaon from Iran, and ICRISAT sciensts. Dr Rob Bertram, Chief Scienst, Bureau of Food Security, United States Agency for Internaonal Development (USAID), and members of the Breeding Program Assessment Tool (BPAT) team – Dr Christopher Lambrides, Senior Research Fellow, University of Queensland; and Dr Yilma Kebede, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundaon, also aended the field day. The plenary session was co-chaired by Dr Belum VS Reddy, Principal Scienst (rered), ICRISAT, and Dr Sujay Rakshit, Principal Scienst, Indian Instute of Millets Research. g Parcipants at the Sorghum Field Day organized at ICRISAT-India. Photo: PS Rao, ICRISAT This work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals More on ICRISAT's work on sorghum here
Transcript
1ICRISAT Happenings March 2017 1739
NewsletterHappeningsMarch 2017, No. 1739
Feature Stories
Focusing on sorghum as health food and forage
Scientists at ICRISAT-India were encouraged to focus on developing high-Zn sorghum lines for processed foods
and also sorghum varieties as forage with higher digestibility. From traditional uses of sorghum for food, feed, starch and alcohol, the market demand is gradually shifting towards sorghum to be used as high-quality forage and as a health food. This was the key message at the Sorghum Scientists Field Day recently held at ICRISAT-India.
At the plenary session, participants called for introducing new concepts in post-rainy sorghum parental lines and hybrids development. They recommended a greater focus on forage research, particularly single-cross forage hybrids with higher digestibility. Representatives from the processing industry requested a supply of high-Zn sorghum lines from ICRISAT for developing improved processed foods for various commercial end uses. Participants also called for retaining the stover yield in genotypes of both rainy and post-rainy season sorghum while improving grain yields.
Dr Vilas A Tonapi, Director, Indian Institute of Millets Research, called for development of all-season hybrids to maximize sorghum adoption rates and crop productivity. Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT, urged the scientists to increase breeding efficiency in product development by sharing materials, best practices, locations and knowledge. He suggested that scientists migrate their
data to the Breeding Management System for efficient storage and utilization.
The field day was conducted under the aegis of the Sorghum Hybrid Parents Research Consortium (HPRC), which has been operational at ICRISAT for the past 17 years. HPRC partners with private sector seed companies in hybrid cultivar development, seed production and marketing of hybrid seeds. Ten companies from Asia, Africa and South America are currently members of the consortium.
The Sorghum Scientists Field Day was held on 20-21 February at ICRISAT-India and was attended by 72 members. Participants at
the field day included 25 members from the public sector, 20 from private sector (including a breeder from Seed Co Limited, the largest seed company in Africa), seven researchers from various ICRISAT-Africa locations, a five-member high-level delegation from Iran, and ICRISAT scientists. Dr Rob Bertram, Chief Scientist, Bureau of Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and members of the Breeding Program Assessment Tool (BPAT) team – Dr Christopher Lambrides, Senior Research Fellow, University of Queensland; and Dr Yilma Kebede, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also attended the field day. The plenary session was co-chaired by Dr Belum VS Reddy, Principal Scientist (retired), ICRISAT, and Dr Sujay Rakshit, Principal Scientist, Indian Institute of Millets Research. g
Participants at the Sorghum Field Day organized at ICRISAT-India.
Photo: PS Rao, ICRISAT
This work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals
InterDrought-V calls for modern agriculture technologies to combat drought
At the recently concluded InterDrought-V conference, participants deliberated on the use of modern
technologies to help smallholder farmers combat drought. “Harnessing modern tools is critical to help farmers overcome the devastating effects of drought,” said Mr Krishna Byre Gowda, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka. He stressed that, with agriculture in India being dependent on the ‘wager of monsoons’, he was heartened by the community of scientists collaborating on one of the most important issues affecting farmers.
In Karnataka, India, 160 of 176 blocks in the state are currently drought affected. Mr. Gowda looked forward to technologies and solutions to be developed by scientists to tackle the problems faced by farmers due to greater variability.
Every year, drought-related disasters affect vast regions that impact food production. InterDrought conferences serve as a platform for presenting and debating key issues and strategies relevant for improving tolerance to drought and other stresses in crops.
In his inaugural address, Dr Rob Bertram, Chief Scientist, Bureau of Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said, “A combined approach including crop improvement, agronomic practices and irrigation needs to be used for mitigating drought stress in developing countries.”
“By using a holistic approach, organizations like ICRISAT need to work together and contribute to this important international food production constraint to feed the world. Prime Minister Modi has laid before us the challenge to double the income of farmers. It will be essential to enhance crop production and link farmers to markets,” said Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT.
“Given the severity of drought, a central challenge for researchers and policy makers is to devise technologies that lend greater resilience to agricultural production under this stress. Therefore, participants from 56 countries have assembled here to address this important issue,” said Dr Rajeev Varshney, Conference Organization Chair and Research Program Director, ICRISAT.
“Farmers need to be placed at the centre of research and development activities related to drought so that they can have more produce and better incomes,” said Mr S Pattanayak, Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India.
“Drought research needs to be handled from different angles. We need breeding, physiology, biotechnology and agronomy to make crops resilient,” said Dr JS Sandhu, Deputy Director General (Crop Science), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
Dr Francois Tardieu, Research Director, INRA-Montpellier, and Chair, InterDrought-V, highlighted that this conference is in continuation of earlier InterDrought Conferences held in France (ID-I, 1995), Italy (ID-II, 2005), China (ID-III, 2009) and Australia (ID-IV, 2013), and invited all participants to the next conference in 2021.
He further added that from one year to the next, weather variability was identified as the critical risk to farming. This needs urgent solutions, and the conference served as an important call to action.
A Climate Smart Agriculture workshop, held during the conference co-chaired by Dr David Bergvinson and Dr RS Paroda, former Director General, ICAR, has come up with a declaration on Climate Smart Agriculture. This will be circulated widely to funders and policy makers.
InterDrought-V conference was held in Hyderabad, India from 21-25 February, 2017. The conference had 23 invited presentations and 26 contributory presentations across eight sessions. In addition, 55 presentations were delivered in eight workshops. Young scientists from developing countries interacted with eminent scientists and policy makers during the event. g
Mr Krishna Byre Gowda, Minister of Agriculture, Govt. of Karnataka, speaking at the InterDrought-V held in Hyderabad, India.
Photo: Shiva/Somesh
This work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals
3ICRISAT Happenings March 2017 1739
New blog post
Combining traditions and technologies among tribal farmers in IndiaTeams from ICRISAT participated in a 10-day tribal festival in Telangana, India, during which they interacted with tribal smallholder farmers to understand their fundamental issues and requirements. The festival showcased food products developed by small entrepreneurs incubated at ICRISAT-AIP as well as elite sorghum cultivars developed at ICRISAT.
Abstract: Traits influencing plant water use eventually define the fitness of genotypes for specific rainfall environments. We assessed the response of several water use traits to vapour pressure deficit (VPD) in pearl millet genotypes known to differ in drought adaptation mechanisms. Plant water use traits at various levels of plant organisation were evaluated in seven experiments in plants exposed either transiently or over the long term to different VPD regimes. Such changes may allow plants to increase their water transport capacity in a high VPD environment and are genotype-specific. Knowledge of plasticity of water use traits in growth environments that vary in evaporative demand is necessary to develop trait-based breeding approaches to complex constraints.http://oar.icrisat.org/9606/
Identification of SNP and SSR markers in finger millet using next generation sequencing technologies
Authors: Gimode D, Odeny DA, de Villiers EP, Wanyonyi S, Dida MM, Mneney EE, Muchugi A, Machuka J and de Villiers SM
Abstract: Finger millet is an important cereal crop in eastern Africa and southern India with excellent grain storage quality and unique ability to thrive in extreme environmental conditions. The current study used Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies to develop both Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers. Genomic DNA from two cultivated finger millet genotypes was sequenced. These markers are a significant addition to the existing 82 published SSRs, especially with regard to the previously reported low polymorphism levels in finger millet. Our results also reveal an unexploited finger millet genetic resource that can be included in the regional breeding programs in order to efficiently optimize productivity.http://oar.icrisat.org/9612/
Population dynamics of lobster moth, Neostauropus alternus Walker on pigeonpea in relation to abiotic factors of Pantnagar region
Authors: Chakravarty S, Bera T, Agnihotri M and Jagdish J
Published: 2016, Environment and Ecology, 35 (1B): ISSN 0970-0420
Abstract: Field experiments were carried out to study the population dynamics of Lobster moth on pigeonpea and its relation with different weather variables during kharif seasons of 2013-14 and 2014-15 under unprotected
conditions at Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India. The results revealed that the incidence of this insect commenced from the 34th standard week and it remained active up to 41st standard week of both the years. Correlation studies indicated that larval population of N. alternus exhibited a significant positive correlation with temperature whereas a significant negative correlation was established with relative humidity. http://oar.icrisat.org/9617/
Caracterisation Agro-Morphologique Des Accessions D’arachide (Arachis Hypogaea L.) Pour La Teneur En Huile
Authors: Issa A, Falalou H, Younoussa OM, Yacoubou B, Didier ZJ
Published: 2016, European Scientific Journal, 12 (15): 337–351. ISSN 18577881
Abstract: In Niger, groundnut is cultivated in a large area. Groundnut oil is well appreciated by consumers, notably in rural areas. The aim of this study was to select the accessions and taxa with high oil content and identify the oil content related traits. Analysis revealed high and significant correlation between oil content and seed size. Seed size and taxon type in groundnut could be criteria to select genotypes for oil industries.http://oar.icrisat.org/9613/
Geographic patterns of phenotypic diversity in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) landraces from North Eastern Ethiopia
Abstract: Sorghum landraces from North Eastern (NE) Ethiopia were evaluated for agro-morphologic characters to assess geographic patterns of phenotypic diversity and to identify whether there are specific areas of high diversity for particular traits. The clustering of zones and districts revealed close relationship between geographic locations based on proximities and agro-ecological similarities. Differentiation analysis showed that most of the landraces variability was within rather than between geographic origins of the landraces, indicating weak genetic differentiation among landraces from predefined geographic origins such as political administrative zones and districts.
http://oar.icrisat.org/9622/
Soil fertility as influenced by alternate sequential cropping systems to rice-rice (Oryza sativa L.) in Tunga Bhadra project area
Authors: Nagoli SA, Basavanneppa MA, Sawargaonkar GL, Biradar DP, Biradar SA and Navyashree MR
Abstract: A field experiment was carried out near Agriculture Research Station, Siruguppa in Karnataka during kharif and rabi of 2014-15 to study influence of alternate sequential cropping systems to rice-rice system on fertility status of soil in Tunga Bhadra Project Area. The
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study revealed that significantly higher rice equivalent yield was recorded in cotton-sesame cropping system compared to rest of the cropping systems. Significantly higher system productivity was recorded with maize-chickpea cropping system and it was significantly superior over existing rice-rice cropping systems. The cotton-sesame and maize-chickpea crop sequences are more productive and sustainable as they improve the productivity and fertility status of soil when compared to other cropping sequences.http://oar.icrisat.org/9621/
Evaluation of designated hybrid seed parents of pearl millet for blast resistance
Authors: Goud TY, Sharma R, Gupta SK, Devi GU, Gate VL and Boratkar M
Published: 2016, Indian Journal of Plant Protection, 44 (1): 83–87. ISSN 0253-4355
Abstract: One hundred sixty designated B-lines (maintainers of male sterile lines) of pearl millet were screened for blast resistance under greenhouse conditions. The identified blast resistant lines are agronomically superior breeding lines being hybrid parents designated at ICRISAT. Thus, these lines could be either used in the crossing programs to develop blast resistant hybrid parents or as one of the parents for the development of blast resistant hybrids to diversify the genetic base of blast resistance in future pearl millet hybrids.http://oar.icrisat.org/9620/
Financing irrigation development in Cambodia: Emerging options
Author: Raju KVPublished: 2016, Asian Journal of Science and Technology, 07 (08): 3281–3304. ISSN 0976-3376
Abstract: This paper focuses on current status of financing irrigation development in Cambodia, water users organizations across its provinces and their field situation and functions. Stress is on identifying options to fund the irrigation development in Cambodia more aggressively and its long term sustainability. Also discussed are possible approaches, project design, governance reforms required in water sector, and supportive policy and legal aspects.http://oar.icrisat.org/9619/
Influence of maternal Season on Field Establishment of Sorghum Varieties Grown in Zimbabwe
Authors: Ngwenya N, Manenji BT, Madanzi T, Kudita S and Mahohoma W
Published: 2016, International Journal of Plant & Soil Science, 11 (06): 01–09. ISSN 2320-7035
Abstract: Maternal season, the prevailing environmental conditions during crop growth, has been known to influence not only grain yield but also seed quality. Laboratory and field experiments were conducted in October 2014, to determine the influence of total rainfall and mean monthly temperature on germination, vigor and emergence of sorghum seeds which were harvested from three different seasons and kept under controlled conditions. It can be concluded that maternal season has great influence on the vigor of seed produced under dryland agriculture.
http://oar.icrisat.org/9624/
Sorghum: A Multipurpose Bioenergy Crop
Authors: Rao PS, Vinutha KS, Kumar GSA, Chiranjeevi T, Uma A, Lal P, Prakasham RS, Singh HP, Sreenivasa Rao R, Chopra S and Jose S
Published: 2016, Sorghum: State of the Art and Future Perspectives. American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America, US, 01–26. ISBN 978-0-89118-628-1
Abstract: Sorghum is a resilient dryland cereal crop with wide adaptation having high water, nutrient, and radiation use efficiencies. This crop is expected to enhance food, feed, fodder, and fuel security. Sweet sorghum has the ability to accumulate sugars in the stalks without much reduction in grain production. Hence, it is used as a first-generation biofuel feedstock, where the grain and stalk sugars can be used for producing bioenergy, while energy sorghum or biomass sorghum is increasingly viewed as a potential feedstock for lignocellulosic biofuel production. This chapter dwells on sorghum feedstock characteristics, biofuel production models, sustainability indicators, and commercialization.
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