Abstract
Challenge in hybrid sorghum development for the Nigerian environment remains the identification of suitable seed parents, constrained most particularly by non-appropriate indigenous sources of stable male-sterility maintenance on the female parents. To achieve this goal, defined “functional” heterotic parental-pools is required to create new and diverse hybrid parents for sustainable hybrid development. To explore availability of male–sterility inducing cytoplasm, an exploratory landrace Sorghum collection across some states of Nigeria 2014 and 2015 were carried out and evaluated for target hybrid parent traits. 388 testcrosses generated from 40 randomly selected landraces collections using 2 male sterile lines (ICS38A and ICS24005A), were evaluated for sterility maintainer to identify lines that are suitable for conversion to male sterile lines and restorers. Preliminary characterization during 2014 cropping season evaluation showed that most of the sorghum landraces grown in the Sudan Savannah are white or yellow grain with compact elliptic panicle forms (caudatum type) accounting for 46% as compared to those in Guinea Savannah cultivating white or red grain with loose dropping panicle forms (guinea type). Result from the genomic analysis revealed wide genetic diversity with 5 major distinct clusters at 0.2 Euclidian distances. The genetic materials used as parents in the testcrosses showed high potential of genetic male sterility maintainers and were diverse, where 3 of the landrace parents were mapped to cluster 1, 13 to cluster 2, 1 to cluster 3 and 3 to cluster 5. Given that the collection areas are diverse with heterogeneous agro-ecologies, the landraces observed could be used as important sources of novel alleles for developing hybrid parents.
Highlights
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is the fifth most important cereal crop in the world, but first important cereal in Nigeria
Days to 50% flowering ranged from 71-121 days and plant height ranged from 130-512.5cm
Panicle shape and grain colour varied significantly where majority of the those grown in the sahelien agro-ecology were white (Farafara) while those from sudanian agro-ecology were yellow grain (Kaura) with compact elliptic panicle forms
Summary
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is the fifth most important cereal crop in the world, but first important cereal in Nigeria It is the most extensively traditionally grown cereal in the savannas of Nigeria extending from the Southern Guinea to Sahelien Savannah agro-ecologies of Nigeria, primarily because of its adaptation to drought. Millions of rural resource limited smallholder farmers in the dry savannas of Nigeria consume sorghum in their daily diets as staple food where flour is locally processed into ‘towo’ and non-alcoholic beverage like ‘kunun-zaki’. In addition to this popularity of sorghum use in traditional dishes, there is a gradual increase in demand for pre-processed sorghum foods for convenience and in the malting industry. Based on the increasing demand by malting industries for beverages the expected increase for use of sorghum will rise by about 30% in
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