Genetic and genomic resources, and breeding for accelerating improvement of small millets: current status and future interventions

Current agricultural and food systems encourage research and development on major crops, neglecting regionally important minor crops. Small millets include a group of small- seeded cereal crops of the grass family Poaceae. This includes finger millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet, little millet, teff, fonio, job’s tears, guinea millet, and browntop millet. Small millets are an excellent choice to supplement major staple foods for crop and dietary diversity because of their diverse adaptation on marginal lands, less water requirement, lesser susceptibility to stresses, and nutritional superiority compared to major cereal staples. Growing interest among consumers about healthy diets together with climate-resilient features of small millets underline the necessity of directing more research and development towards these crops. Except for finger millet and foxtail millet, and to some extent proso millet and teff, other small millets have received minimal research attention in terms of development of genetic and genomic resources and breeding for yield enhancement. Considerable breeding efforts were made in finger millet and foxtail millet in India and China, respectively, proso millet in the United States of America, and teff in Ethiopia. So far, five genomes, namely foxtail millet, finger millet, proso millet, teff, and Japanese barnyard millet, have been sequenced, and genome of foxtail millet is the smallest (423-510 Mb) while the largest one is finger millet (1.5 Gb). Recent advances in phenotyping and genomics technologies, together with available germplasm diversity, could be utilized in small millets improvement. This review provides a comprehensive insight into the importance of small millets, the global status of their germplasm, diversity, promising germplasm resources, and breeding approaches (conventional and genomic approaches) to accelerate climate-resilient and nutrient-dense small millets for sustainable agriculture, environment, and healthy food systems

Lamprey fisheries: history, trends and management

Three anadromous lamprey species support important commercial fisheries in the northern hemisphere, sea lamprey in the Iberian Peninsula and France, European river lamprey in the Baltic Sea countries and Russia, and Arctic lamprey in Russia. Pacific lamprey, Caspian lamprey, Korean lamprey and pouched lamprey are harvested for subsistence and local commerce on the Pacific coast of North America, and in Russia, China and Oceania, respectively. Habitat loss caused by human activities in rivers have reduced lamprey populations and collapsed most commercial fisheries worldwide. Overfishing is a concern because traditional fishing gears (e.g., pots, fyke nets) target lampreys during their upstream migration, usually in physical bottlenecks, which can result in exceedingly high fishing mortality. The reduction in catches has inflated lamprey prices and encouraged illegal fishing in certain countries (e.g., Portugal, Russia). The success of management actions for lamprey fisheries could be at risk due to knowledge gaps that still exist regarding stock structure, estimates of stage-specific mortality, distribution at sea, preferred hosts, and climate change impacts to the distribution and availability of adequate hosts. There is an urgent need for good-quality data from reported commercial landings and also from monitoring studies regarding the efficacy of mitigation and restoration efforts (e.g., habitat restoration, fishing regulations, artificial rearing and stocking). Involving the general public and stakeholders in the management and conservation of lampreys through outreach actions is crucial to promote the protection of the ecological and cultural values of lampreys and the understanding of their vulnerability