Towards conservation and sustainable use of an indigenous crop: A large partnership network enabled the genetic diversity assessment of 1539 fonio (Digitaria exilis) accessions

Neglected and under-utilized species represent important genetic resources and untapped reservoirs of diversity to address global food and nutrition challenges. Characterizing the extent of their genetic diversity and making it available is of prime importance to their wider use and to develop collaborative research networks. White fonio (Digitaria exilis (Kippist) Stapf) is a small cereal domesticated and cultivated in West Africa. It represents locally important food resources for smallholder farmers of arid and semi-arid lands. Using an unprecedented number of 1539 genotyped landraces, we assessed fonio genetic diversity and population structure across its entire area of cultivation with simple sequence repeat markers (SSRs). We provide here two files: (1) the passport data of the white fonio collection containing information for the 2372 accessions (ID, country, project, year of sampling, geographical coordinates and whether the accession was included or not in the genetic analyses). (2) The SSRs data for the 1539 accessions successfully genotyped, associated with passport information. The genotypes were obtained with 14 microsatellites markers. For each marker, the score of the two alleles are separated by "/". Missing genotypes are coded "999/999".