Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.), also known as common millet or broomcorn millet, is an important ancient crop mostly grown for food, feed, and fodder purposes largely in China, Russia, India, and the USA. It is an under-researched and under-utilized crop. Over 29,000 germplasm accessions have been conserved in genebanks globally. Five races (miliaceum, patentissimum, contractum, compactum, ovatum) have been recognized in proso millet based on panicle morphology and shape. The genebank at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics conserves 849 accessions of proso millet originating from 30 countries and represents all five races. Characterization of these germplasm accessions revealed large variability for morpho-agronomic traits, including for days to 50% flowering (26 to 50 days), plant height (20 to 133 cm), and inflorescence length (22 to 400 mm). On average, the race miliaceum was tall (62 cm) with long panicles (209 mm) and ovatum had short plants (46 cm) with small panicles (108 mm). The average Gower’s distance based on 18 morpho-agronomic traits on 841 accessions was 0.261. The race miliaceum had the highest among accessions within race average pairwise distance (0.254), while the distance was the lowest in ovatum (0.192). The races miliaceum and ovatum showed the highest divergence with each other (0.275), while the lowest divergence was observed between compactum and ovatum (0.229). Trait-specific sources were identified for early maturity, tall plants, long inflorescences, and greater seed size. The information on variability and trait-specific sources identified could potentially support proso millet improvement.

Finger millet is an important drought-tolerant and grain-nutrient dense food crop grown in semi-arid regions in Asia and Africa. The forage is used as a source of dry roughage for feeding livestock. In this study, the finger millet diversity panel (310 accessions and four controls) representing the global collection of the finger millet germplasm conserved at the ICRISAT genebank was assessed for forage quality and diversity in the years 2018 and 2019. Results of the study suggested that finger millet can generate stover yield ranging from 2890 to 10,779 kg ha⁻¹. Finger millet forage contained 6.47% to 8.15% of crude protein, >90% of dry matter content, 11.47% to 14.17% of ash content, 62.36% to 67.73% of neutral detergent fiber (NDF), 33.07% to 38.37% of acid detergent fiber (ADF), 3.95% to 4.80% of acid detergent lignin (ADL), 6.18% to 6.89% of metabolizable energy (ME) and 45.21% to 49.09% of in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD) with the grain yield of 810 to 3698 kg ha⁻¹ at maturity stage. The per se performance between the races, regions, and biological status has been performed and differed significantly for important traits. The 314 accessions were grouped into five clusters based on the performance for food-feed traits. Except for crude protein, there was a positive relationship between forage quality-positive traits and grain yield, indicating that agronomic and forage quality traits could be improved simultaneously. The top 10 promising accessions for important forage quality traits and accessions with multiple forage quality traits were identified. This study provides a detailed understanding of the variability that exists in forage quality traits in crop residues and their association with agronomic traits in the finger millet germplasm. The identified top-performing accessions would be the key genetic resources for developing dual-purpose cultivars and the information from this study will be useful for future finger millet food-feed trait improvement.