초록
Pearl millet is a $C_4$ plant and summer crop originated from west Africa, and the sixth most important cereal in the world and the most widely cultivated millet in the semi-arid tropics as a major staple food crop. Its grain of higher quality protein is used to make unleavened bread chapatis and prepared as gruel, dumplings, couscous and beer. It is also used as animal feed and forage in both temperate and tropical regions because it has a capability to grow well not only in the fertile soil, but also in the poor and dry soil. Most of the current breeding procedures used in pearl millet are aimed at maximum exploitation of hybrid vigor for both grain and forage yields in Korea. Pearl millet is ideally suited for exploitation of heterosis using cytoplasmic male sterile lines as seed parent, and fertile inbred lines and open-pollinated cultivars as pollen parent. Pearl millet hybrids developed in Korea produced 3 to 7 tons of grain and 100 to 150 tons of green fodder per hectare.