Agronomic performance of improved pearl millet cultivars in southern Chad

Abstract

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is a vital staple food crop for poor people in dry-land areas. It plays an important role on human consumption in South of Chad where farmers always used landraces with a little adoption of improved cultivars. Evaluation of agronomic performance of inbred cultivars at research station is important to identify the high performance genotype to be released as new cultivars in farmer area. So, five improved varieties associated with a well-known variety from research were evaluated for ten agronomical traits. Experiment was carried out during rainy season of 2019 at the research station of Bébédjia, South of Chad. The results of the analysis of variance of assessed traits showed high significant differences (p<0.001) for spike girth and slight significant difference (p<0.05) for days to flowering, thousand seeds weight and productive tillers per plant. An important positive and significant correlations were also noted between day to flowering and number of grains per plot (r = 0.7; p<0.01), seed weight per plot (0.684; p<0.01) and potential grain yield (r = 0.684; p<0.01). Moreover, three cultivars with an important potential grains yield namely ICMV167006 (4.99 t.ha⁻¹), ICMV 167005 (4.68 t.ha⁻¹) and ICMV177111 (3.98 t.ha⁻¹) were identified. Otherwise, for the days to flowering, the cultivars ICMV167006 (73.67 days), ICMV 167005 (75.33 days) are earlier than ICMV 177 111 (78.67 days). These cultivars could be proposed to be released in farmer area as novel cultivars.