Identifying Drought Tolerant Finger Millet Landraces for the Hills of Nepal

Finger millet is in the fourth rank among the major cereals in Nepal after rice, maize and wheat. Since it is cultivated in rainfed conditions, drought is one of the vital production constraints for this crop. With the objective of enhancing the utilization of native landraces conserved ex situ in genebank, 300 finger millet accessions were evaluated under drought stress and normal conditions at Khumaltar (1,360 masl), Lalitpur, Nepal during 2017 and 2018. In both the years, genotypes were significantly different for the yield and other agronomic characters. Eight different drought tolerant indices namely drought resistance index, geometric mean productivity, harmonic mean, mean productivity, stress susceptibility index, tolerance, yield index and yield stability index for each genotype were calculated using grain yield data recorded from the stress (Yds) and non-stress (Yns) experiment. Majority of the landraces were grouped under moderately susceptible group in both the years followed by moderately tolerant and susceptible group based on all the drought tolerant indices (DTIs). Five landraces, namely NGRC4849, NGRC6487, NGRC04852, NGRC03491 and NGRC6490 with average grain yield of 4670, 3624, 3426, 3191 and 3132 kg/ha, respectively, were identified as stable drought tolerant landraces compared to the released varieties. These landraces could be the potential sources of drought tolerance for finger millet improvement program for the mid-hills of Nepal.