Conservation priorities for endangered coastal North African Pennisetum glaucum L. landrace populations as inferred from phylogenetic considerations and population structure analysis

The increasing anthropologic pressure and the modernization of agriculture have led to a forsaking of pearl millet traditional cultivars inducing a progressive loss of the genetic variability encompassed in this locally-adapted germplasm. Imperatively, national efforts based on robust data gleaned from genetic surveys have to be undertaken in order to set up suitable conservation priorities. Inthis study, in addition to the assessment of the genetic diversity and population structure among and within a set of seven pearl millet landrace populations from coastal North Africa, demographic and phylogenetic data, conservation priority scores were calculated according to Vane-Wright et al. (1991). To date, genetic diversity of pearl millet in North Africa is still poorly documented. The present survey reports for the first time the use of highly informative nSSR markers (PIC =0.74) on P. glaucum landraces representative of the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa. A high level of genetic ...