1. BIG IDEAS
Dryland cereals for the future
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Grown by 33 million smallholder households in the drylands of Africa and Asia
Sorghum is dietary staple of 500 million people, millets of 90 million people in
the drier areas of Africa and Asia.
Grown in rural and marginal, often harsh environments with limited market
opportunities.
ryland cereals like sorghum and millet are drought tolerant, often the only
food and fodder crops for smallholders in the dryland regions.
Highly nutritious, dryland cereals crops contribute to reduction in malnutrition.
They are easy to produce and has high multiple uses (food, fodder, biofuel,
beverage) – offering many livelihood opportunities for farmers and agribusiness
entrepreneurs.
Growth in demand for dryland cereals will be driven not only by population growth
but by new markets, such as increased demands by middle-to-upper classes for
health food, weaning foods for infant, and especially as livestock feed and fodder.
Science with a human face
www.icrisat.org
November 2013

2. Demand for cereals in the target regions is
forecast to increase by about 40% by 2020
(over the 2000 baseline). In the face of
drought and changing climate, improving
the resilience of sorghum and millets to
meet this demand is a must.
Beyond the physical constraints of their harsh
ecologies, dryland cereals also face biotic stresses
that are difficult, if possible at all, to be addressed
through traditional methods.
We are now working on crop improvement
products and associated technologies
for dryland cereals for over 11.8 million
hectares in Africa and Asia directly
benefiting 5.8 million smallholder
households with a total of 34 million
beneficiaries (including value chain
operators).
1)
We will use modern approaches to design
more resilient dryland cereals like sorghum
and millets that require key breeding targets for
specific environments. Here, we will need:
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phenotyping to dissect the genetics of critical
traits
developing/accessing analysis and decision
support tools in modern breeding
creating new cultivars that combine improved
resilience traits with improved productivity,
resistance to biotic stresses, and grain
qualities.
These benefits are not only via improved
food security and nutrition, but also through
opportunities to increase cash income by
way of off-farm sale of food, feed and fodder
to meet the demands of the increasing
urbanized population.
The problem and opportunity
Production of dryland cereals is constrained by
limited farmer access to seed of improved varieties,
as well as knowledge about them.
The degraded and low fertility soils often found in
dryland environments, as well as drought, are major
constraints, and research continues to focus on
improving the resiliency of new varieties and hybrids
to these harsh environmental realities.
Farmers need to learn about and adopt new
management practices, without which improved
varieties and hybrids usually have little or no
advantage over traditional cultivars.
Grain quality, its storability, and fodder quality are
important considerations to farmers, and can limit
the adoption and production of new cultivars.
Our dryland cereals R4D value chain
approach
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2)
We will develop develop a platform to
create resilience trait – based on different
biotechnologies that will create traits not
available in existing germplasm.
The idea: Some of the biotic constraints that
sorghum and pearl millet face in their ecologies
do not have a game-changing solution from their
cultivated or wild genepool: they require the
creation of that resistance.
Involvement
Partner with us in developing dryland cereals for
the future and expanding the scale of our R4D
operations through investments in:
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Finally, pests and diseases can severely constrain
dryland cereal production.
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We will elevate and strengthen our research for
development efforts to improve the resilience of
sorghum and millets in the face of drought and
changing climate.
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While genetic tools are now available in breeding,
improving cultivars for complex constraints requires
a multi-discipline approach at a large scale.
2
A concept note for
Ensuring nutritional security in rural India
large scale throughput phenotyping
increasing size of network of testing
locations and the quality of data collection
training future breeders
integration and use of full potential of
genomics, physiology, modeling, biometrics
and informatics to enhance genetic gain
especially for drought tolerance
a high throughput platform for generating
thousands of events and screening facilities
exploring non-transgenic ways of creating
resistances.
Contact
Stefania Grando, Director, Research Program on
Dryland Cereals, ICRISAT.
Email: s.grando@cgiar.org