Abstract
Sorghum is an important crop, which is widely used as food, forage, fodder and biofuel. Despite its natural adaption to resource-poor and stressful environments, increasing yield potential of sorghum under more favorable conditions holds promise. Nitrogen is the most important nutrient for crops, having a dynamic impact on all growth, yield, and grain-quality-determining processes. Thus, increasing nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in sorghum would provide opportunities to achieve higher yield and better-quality grain. NUE is a complex trait, which is regulated by several genes. Hence, exploring genetic diversity for NUE can help to develop molecular markers associated with NUE, which can be utilized to develop high NUE sorghum genotypes with greater yield potential. Research on improving NUE in sorghum suggests that, under water-deficit conditions, traits such as stay-green and altered canopy architecture, and under favorable conditions, traits such as an optimized stay-green and senescence ratio and efficient N translocation to grain, are potential breeding targets to develop high NUE sorghum genotypes. Hence, under a wide range of environments, sorghum breeding programs will need to reconsider strategies and develop breeding programs based on environment-specific trait(s) for better adaptation and improvement in productivity and grain quality. Unprecedented progress in sensor-based technology and artificial intelligence in high-throughput phenotyping has provided new horizons to explore complex traits in situ, such as NUE. A better understanding of the genetics and molecular pathways involving NUE, accompanied by targeted high-throughput sensor-based indices, is critical for identifying lines or developing management practices to enhance NUE in sorghum.
Highlights
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, Poaceae] is an important C4 crop that is mainly utilized for human food, animal feed, forage, and fodder, but it is an important source of fiber and feedstock for biofuel production (Bollam et al, 2021)
This review aims to highlight and summarize the importance of enhancing nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in sorghum and to discuss the role of conventional, as well as advanced high-throughput phenotyping, in determining genetic diversity for NUE in sorghum
One study reported that N application did not alter mineral concentrations in sorghum grains, except for P and S contents, and the results showed that there was a higher P content and a lower S content with increasing N application (Kaufman et al, 2013)
Summary
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, Poaceae] is an important C4 crop that is mainly utilized for human food, animal feed, forage, and fodder, but it is an important source of fiber and feedstock for biofuel production (Bollam et al, 2021). Sorghum is grown worldwide and distributed across different continents including North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia Improving the resource-use efficiency, yield, and quality in grain sorghum would affect large number of people around the world. Higher grain yields under intensive agricultural systems have been achieved with adequate nitrogen (N) supply (Mahama et al, 2014; Bollam et al, 2021). Research on sorghumyield improvement has been focused mainly on gaining smaller increments under marginal and unfavorable environments, and limited efforts have been invested in exploiting the true genetic potential of sorghum. Understanding the sourcesink dynamics and the ability to enhance nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in sorghum, including the traits or mechanisms involved in N uptake, transport, and remobilization, could provide new opportunities to achieve significant genetic gain under relatively favorable environments
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