Timely seeding is important to guarantee high, stable yields. Seeding times vary with location, cultivars, and the potential threat of diseases and pests. Spring millet should generally be seeded in the first half of May. Seeding time of summer millet depends on the harvest of the previous crop, but optimally it should be the first half of June and no later than early July.
In the temperate zone, the crop performs best on level fields, whereas in cooler regions, hill culture is more suitable.
The optimum density of millet seedlings varies with cultivar and local environmental conditions.
Thinning should be done at the 5-7 leaf stage. It can be as single plants or as clumps of 3-5 seedlings. The density of spring millet is generally 30,000-45,000 clumps/ha, whereas that of summer millet is 60,000-75,000 clumps/ha.
Weeding, essential to growing this crop, is usually done 3-4 times with emphasis on the removal of grass competitors. During weeding, usually done by hoe, the earth is molded around the bases of plants to prevent crop lodging.
Foxtail millet is a drought resistant crop mainly grown under dryland conditions; it can produce yields of 3,000-6,000 kg/ha under conditions where the maize cannot survive. It also responds well to water and fertilizer, producing much higher yields.
7. Future prospects
7.1 Yield potential improvement
Grown as a drought resistant dryland crop in poorer agricultural areas, foxtail millet yield levels in China remain comparatively low at around 2,000 kg/ha. However, it has great potential for increased production if cultivated under better conditions.
In Shandong Province, the average yield is already 4,000 kg/ha. It is noteworthy that experimental yields of foxtail millet have exceeded 9,000 kg/ha, indicating the very large gap between yield potential and farmers’ yields. Thus improvement of yield potential and yield stability across environments are important considerations for breeding programs.
7.2 Improvement of cultivation technologies The cultivation technologies of foxtail millet in China also require improvement. Foxtail millet is often planted on arid land with rough seedbeds and poor soil conditions. Under such conditions, establishment of seedlings produced from very small seeds is a major problem. Consequently, farmers sow excessive quantities of seed to ensure adequate emergence, followed by thinning to desired levels.
This approach is wasteful of seed, labor intensive for seedling thinning, and prone to failure if the weather is wet at thinning.
In the 1980s, the Millet Research Institute, Hebei AAFS, developed a mechanical planting method using a mixture of live and dead seeds. This permitted the seeding rate to be reduced from 40 kg/ha to 15-23 kg/ha, but further reductions are still required. During 1999-2001, the Millet Research Institute of the Shanxi AAS also developed a method in which mixtures of seeds with and without herbicide dressing are planted to reduce the population density.
7.3 Use of foxtail millet as a health food It is well known that foxtail millet grain is highly nutritious and that millet straw is a good fodder for animals. Currently, over 85% of millet is used for making congee, and that used for processed food and fodder accounts for only 10% and 5%, respectively. The Millet Research Institute, Hebei AAFS, is attempting to better define the special attributes of millet and to develop and promote it as a health food for affluent Chinese and foreign consumers.
7.4 Biotechnology application
During the 1990s, studies on somaclonal variation in foxtail millet led to the development and release of summer millet cultivars Jizhanggu 6 in 1996 and Zheng 407 in 1999 (Diao et al., 1999a).
The Millet Research Institute, Hebei AAFS, initially used trisomic analysis to locate genes in foxtail millet to individual chromosomes, and 19 genes at 12 loci were located (Wang et al., 1994). The Institute has collaborated with the John Innes Center, Norwich, UK, to construct an RFLP map of 180 loci and to
locate a gene for tolerance to Trifluralin herbicide (Wang et al., 1998). QTL mapping for kernel weight and threshing ability is currently in progress.
Very recently, an Agrobacterium transformation protocol was developed for foxtail millet, and significant progress has also been made in gene cloning and associated work (Diao et al., 1999b, 2006). It is expected that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and molecular markers will play significant roles in the future development of this crop.
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