Résumé
Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., syn. Cenchrus americanus (L.) Morrone)], one of the major staple food for around 100 million people across Africa and India, is a so-called “orphan” crop. Recently, sequencing of its genome offers numerous possibilities to advance pearl millet conservation, management, and breeding to cope against climate change and for agricultural productivity enhancement. To decipher genetic diversity and genomic patterns of adaptation and regions under selection, genetic differences between and within populations at the genome scale can be analyzed using latest population genomics approaches and sequencing technologies. A conceptual framework of population genomics in pearl millet and a series of case studies that led to the identification of genomic signatures of variation in space and time to evolutionary and adaptive processes are presented. In this chapter, we discuss how population genomics, despite some complexities, paves new paths for understanding genomic diversity and genetic basis of adaptation and facilitating genomic-assisted breeding and genetic resources conservation in pearl millet, a vital crop.