January 10, 2021
The Millet Head Miner (MHM) is a major chronic insect pest of millet in the Sahel. This project will serve to develop technologies for controlling the MHM, with intentions to significantly decrease the devastating losses that it can inflict (often ranging from 40-85 percent) on millet yields. Improved management of this key pest will result in increased pearl millet productivity and greater income and food security among millet farmers.
January 11, 2021
This multi-disciplinary research project includes entomology, breeding, and agricultural economics to develop, evaluate, and deploy sorghum genotypes resistant to abiotic and biotic stresses and adapted to indigenous production and storage systems in West Africa.
January 11, 2021
This project focuses on developing and utilizing high-yielding, locally-adapted sorghum varieties and hybrids that are rich in highly-digestible protein and essential micronutrients, while at the same time suiting local processing methods and diverse production systems. Through collaborative sorghum research, new innovations including the recently completed sequence of the sorghum genome, fine mapping of loci associated with Striga resistance, discovery of biochemical compounds associated with processing and utilization of sorghum grains, and the development of herbicide-resistant sorghum are utilized and explored.
January 12, 2021
The main goal of the pearl millet breeding program at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center in Hays, Kansas is to develop parental lines for producing hybrids for grain and forage use. The project focuses on harnessing genetic variability and development of parental lines for new hybrids with high genetic yield potential, yield stability, improved drought and high temperature tolerance, disease resistance, and enhanced nutritional quality especially micronutrient density of the grain.
January 12, 2021
This project aims to tackle the challenges of both human and animal malnutrition by setting the foundation and developing a strategy for farmer-participatory breeding of highly nutritious, dual-purpose pearl millet varieties in the target countries Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
January 1, 2022
The focus of this project is on resilience of the Hub Food Innovation Centers as convergence points for product innovation and drivers of economic and nutritional impacts for Niger and Senegal. Hub Food Innovation Centers are being strengthened to better engage with entrepreneurs, improve their effectiveness as product development centers, and bolster their sustainability.
January 2, 2022
This project employs tools of biotechnology, breeding, and agronomy to unleash the potential of the sorghum crop for needy farmers. The project team is developing a core-set of sorghum germplasm population to characterize the inherent variability through genotyping by sequencing. The team is also phenotyping valuable traits under target environments and treating data with appropriate bioinformatics and statistical procedures to identify useful allelic variations for drought and Striga resistance.
January 3, 2022
This project expands the team’s sorghum crop improvement efforts through targeted research and technology transfer to promote and enhance sorghum production and nutritional value. Researchers have already identified allelic variation in genes that influence grain and forage quality; specifically, grain protein digestibility, modified starches that produce new functional food and nutritional attributes, and improved forage quality.
January 4, 2022
New sorghum hybrids under development combine high protein digestibility (HPD) mutation with waxy and heterowaxy (WX/HX) starch traits in hard endosperm show a lot of promise for various food applications due to superior functionality and improved protein nutritional quality. This project aims to advance the use of these new sorghums for food and nutrition security in Ethiopia.