Foxtail millet (Setaria italica L.) is grown predominantly in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. India is the second-largest producer of foxtail millet, next to China, and the crop has importance in the history and civilization of the human race in these two countries. Though the foxtail millet was widely cultivated in the ancient era, it has lost its importance with time and became a marginally grown crop catering to the nutritional requirements of a limited population. Despite this, the crop has excellent yield contributing to agronomic traits along with climate-resilient characteristics. Being a C4 panicoid species with a small diploid genome, short lifecycle, in-breeding nature, and close relationship with biofuel grasses, foxtail millet has recently been considered a model crop to study C4 photosynthesis, stress tolerance, and bioenergy traits. Given the importance, the genomes of foxtail millet and green foxtail (S. viridis) had been sequenced. The post-genome era has seen several studies on this crop that promoted foxtail millet from a neglected category to a crop with rich genetic and genomic resources. Studies including genetic and genomic dissection of nutritional traits, response to biotic and abiotic stresses, water-use and nitrogen-use efficiencies, bioenergy traits, and deciphering the photosynthetic machinery have provided insights into the novel genes and pathways underlying the individual traits. This has also provided a roadmap for deploying similar studies in other millets using foxtail millet as a model. In this context, the talk will describe the outcomes of the genomics and transcriptomics studies being pursued to decode climate-resilient traits in foxtail millet and provide a roadmap for executing similar work in other minor millet species.
