Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is the fifth most important cereal crop followed by rice, wheat, maize, sorghum and is well-adapted to survive under drought, high temperature, salinity, lodging and poor soils. It is cultivated on 29 million ha in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of Asia and Africa and is used as a staple food for around 90 million people. Pearl millet being a climate-resilient crop is very important to mitigate the adverse effects of changing climate and can also ensure increased income and food security. Various abiotic stresses are major threat for its growth and development causing severe losses in its yield potential. Among these abiotic stresses, drought stress is the most devastating constraint that can occur at any growth stage in pearl millet causing yield losses of upto 55-67%. During the last several decades, there has been lot of progress in pearl millet genetic improvement in India using both conventional as well as genomic approaches. Recently reported genome sequence information and several genomic studies for drought tolerance emphasize the need for exploiting its valuable attributes. Hence, there is a need to use modern genomic tools and genomic designing approaches to accelerate pearl millet improvement programs. Genomic approaches and genomic tools can definitely speed up gene innovation, trait mapping and can help in understanding of several complicated gene pathways and their interactions. Molecular approaches can be utilized to edit and design pearl millet genome in order to better identify different genes and biochemical pathways governing agronomically important characters like yield, salinity tolerance, drought and heat resistance, rancidity etc. In addition to bioinformatics and systems biology, different "omics" approaches like transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics can be useful for quantitative and qualitative analysis of gene expression allowing more precise use of marker assisted selection (MAS) and transgenic technologies. Keeping this in view, we tried to review the efforts made in pearl millet research towards genetic enhancement, improvement in inheritance and stability of the drought tolerance traits and use of newly developed genomic tools.

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