ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Breeding
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1624252
This article is part of the Research TopicTrends and Perspectives for the Use of Crop Wild Relatives in Crop Breeding - Volume IIView all articles
Identification and Evaluation of Phenotypic Characters and Genetic Diversity Analysis of 1,558 Foxtail Millet Germplasm Resources for Conservation and Breeding
Provisionally accepted
伟 新 薛1,2*
kun zhi yu2kang an mu2fan yang2dan liu2shi zhang2lin jia zhang2yao cheng2shan yu zhao2ping yong zhang1*rui xian wang2*- 1Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
- 2Chifeng Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences, Inner Mongolia, China
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Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) is a specialty mixed grain crop that originated in China. This study comprehensively assessed the phenotypic variability of 1,558 foxtail millet accessions to explore their genetic diversity and facilitate effective germplasm conservation. A total of 25 traits, including 11 quantitative and 14 qualitative, were investigated based on the quantization of physical and chemical descriptors and digital image analysis. The findings revealed significant variations in the coefficient of variation (CV) among the quantitative traits, which ranged from 3.90-28.38%. That of the qualitative traits ranged from 7.44-66.20%. The Shannon-Wiener Index (H′) of the quantitative traits ranged between 1.86-2.08, and that of the qualitative traits ranged from 0.04-1.40. High genetic diversity was also detected among the 1,558 accessions. Based on hierarchical clustering, 1,558 accessions were separated into five categories. The principal component analysis (PCA) results indicated that 10 principal components were extracted when the cumulative contribution rate of the phenotypic traits reached 64.30%. The comprehensive evaluation F-values calculated based on correlation and PCA analyses of 25 phenotypic traits were applied to all the accessions, and the top 10 varieties were identified. Collectively, this study showed the rich genetic diversity of the 1,558 foxtail millet accessions, which could provide a baseline for breeding new millet varieties.
Keywords: foxtail millet, Germplasm resources, Agronomic traits, Comprehensive evaluation, Genetic diversity analysis
Received: 07 May 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 薛, yu, mu, yang, liu, zhang, zhang, cheng, zhao, zhang and wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
伟 新 薛, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
ping yong zhang, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
rui xian wang, Chifeng Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences, Inner Mongolia, China
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