Agriculture in West and Central Africa is based on the open-pollinated varieties. Hybrid pearl millet breeding is primitive in the Sahel, and efforts are being made to develop and release new high-yielding hybrids. The present study was undertaken to identify restorers and maintainers among pearl millet germplasm lines of Mali origin. Two CMS lines, ICMA 177002 (A1) and ICMA 177003 (A4), were used as female parents and were crossed with 38 genotypes. Hence, 83 Plant x Plant F1 hybrids were obtained. The fertility/sterility testing of F1s revealed that genotypes PE00464, PE011325, and PE05303 were able to restore fertility with ICMA 177002. All the genotypes crossed with ICMA 177003 produced sterile hybrids, but the genotype PE05660 exhibited a mixed response of sterility maintenance and fertility restoration. The comparative results of fertility restoration of various genotypes on ICMA 177002 and ICMA 177003 revealed that most of the lines consisted of male sterility maintainer nuclear genes. The genotypes PE05371, PE05676, PE05567, and IP 23050 were identified as common maintainers across CMS sources. The present study suggested that the hybrids in pear millet can be developed using A1 cytoplasm, while there was a need to identify the restorers in the germplasm for A4 cytoplasm.

Keywords: Pearl millet, hybrids, CMS line, maintainer, and restorer