Decades of breeding has produced sorghum suitable for a swath of 14 U.S. states extending from Texas to South Dakota.
With climate change and water shortages, sorghum is becoming an attractive alternative to U.S. crops that require more water. Sorghum also is a critical option for staving off hunger overseas, according to the USDA.
Decades of breeding has produced sorghum suitable for a swath of 14 U.S. states extending from Texas to South Dakota. This year’s U.S. crop is worth an estimated $1.9 billion, the ARS said.
The USDA said breeding new varieties for growers in the U.S. and other temperate regions is challenging because sorghum originated in the tropics. Many tropical sorghums flower when day lengths are short. By the time the days are short enough for flowering in temperate regions, it’s often too cold to produce a sorghum crop with sufficient grain.
Klein and his colleagues selected sorghum lines for cross breeding from the ARS Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit in Griffin, Georgia, U.S., that were known for producing high grain yields in countries such as Sudan and Ethiopia. Because they were originally from sorghum’s center of origin in Africa, the lines selected would not flourish in temperate regions. But they had the potential to produce high grain yields while offering resistance to some of nature’s threats, the USDA said.
The researchers used both molecular and traditional breeding techniques to “convert” tall, late-flowering tropical sorghum plants into lines that mature faster and come equipped with genes for producing high grain yields, according to the ARS.
The results, published in the Journal of Plant Registrations, will help ensure sorghum’s future as an economically viable crop, the USDA said.
