Genomic and Breeding Advances in Finger Millet ( Eleusine coracana ) for Climate‐Resilient Agriculture in Arid and Semiarid Tropics

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana) is a climate‐resilient cereal widely cultivated in the arid and semiarid tropics of Africa and South Asia, where it contributes significantly to food and nutritional security under marginal production conditions. Its inherent tolerance to drought, heat stress, and low soil fertility makes it a strategic crop for smallholder farming systems dependent on rain‐fed agriculture. However, productivity remains low and unstable because of limited genetic improvement, weak seed systems, and continued reliance on traditional landraces. Climate change further exacerbates yield instability, particularly during the flowering and grain‐filling stages. Recent advances in genomics‐assisted breeding, marker‐assisted selection, high‐throughput phenotyping, rapid generation advancement, and multiomics approaches are accelerating the development of improved finger millet varieties with enhanced stress tolerance, yield potential, and nutritional quality. In parallel, participatory breeding approaches are improving alignment of breeding outputs with farmer‐preferred traits such as grain quality, storability, and market acceptance, thereby enhancing adoption potential. Despite these advances, the translation of modern breeding technologies into field‐level impact remains constrained by limited integration across breeding pipelines, underutilization of genetic diversity, and weak seed delivery systems. This review synthesizes global production trends, nutritional value, genetic diversity, farmer perceptions, breeding challenges, and technological innovations in finger millet improvement and identifies key research gaps and future directions for its role in climate‐smart agriculture.