Foxtail millet (Setaria italica (L.) Beauv.), a C4 plant closely related to the bioenergy grasses, is an important staple food and feed crop in some parts of the world. The grains are rich source of protein, fiber, minerals and vitamins. A core collection of 155 accessions was developed. The aim of this study was to multilocationally evaluate core collection accessions to develop mini core in foxtail millet. One hundred and fifty-five accessions together with five controls (four common and one location-specific control) were evaluated for 21 morphological descriptors at five agro-ecologically diverse locations during the 2008 rainy season, India. The experiment was conducted in alpha design with three replications at Patancheru and in augmented design with one of the five controls repeated after every nine-test entry at other locations. The hierarchical cluster analysis of data using phenotypic distances resulted in 25 clusters, from each cluster, ~10% or a minimum of one accession was selected to form a mini core, which comprised of 35 accessions. The comparison of means, variances, frequency distribution, H` and phenotypic correlations revealed that the mini core captured adequate variability from the core collection. This mini core collection is an ideal pool of diverse germplasm for identifying new sources of variation for enhancing the genetic potential of foxtail millet click here to search the data.

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