Sorghum ranks fifth in worldwide economic importance among cereal crops and is one of the most important summer annual grasses of Pakistan. As it is a very diverse crop, sorghum genetic fingerprinting requires an efficient marker system. We estimated genetic divergence among 29 sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) genotypes, including approved varieties and local and exotic lines collected from different ...

The reported high phenolic levels in sorghum have led an interest from sorghum breeding programs in developing and identifying germplasms with high phenolic levels, which require screening a large number of samples to find those with the highest levels. Since wet chemistry screening methods are slow, expensive, and destructive, the use of NIR calibration curves could be an alternative. The obje...

Levels of genetic variation and linkage disequilibrium (LD) are critical factors in association mapping methods as well as in identification of loci that have been targets of selection. Maize, an outcrosser, has a high level of sequence variation and a limited extent of LD. Sorghum, a closely related but largely self-pollinating panicoid grass, is expected to have higher levels of LD. As a firs...

About 26% of the Indian population is deficient in calories and 28% in protein (Chand et al. 2003). The deficiency is most acute among the poor. The magnitude of micronutrient [iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn)] deficit is particularly alarming among children, women of reproductive age, and pregnant and lactating women (Sharma 2003). Current efforts to combat micronutrient malnutrition in the developing ...

Sorghum bicolor is an important cereal crop grown on the arid and semi-arid regions of >98 different countries. These regions are such that this crop is often subjected to low water conditions, which can compromise yields. Stay-green sorghum plants are able to retain green leaf area for longer under drought conditions and as such have higher yields than their senescent counterparts. However, th...

This study evaluated microbial communities of soil (0–10 cm) as affected by dryland cropping systems under different tillage practices after 5 years. The soil type was an Olton sandy loam with an average of 16.4% clay, 67.6% sand and 0.65 g kg of organic matter (OM). The cropping systems evaluated were grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.)— cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) (Srg-Ct), cotton-winter rye (...

Time to maturity is a critical trait in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) breeding, as it determines whether a variety can be grown in a particular cropping system or ecosystem. Understanding the nucleotide variation and the mechanisms of molecular evolution of the maturity genes would be helpful for breeding programs. In this study, we analyzed the nucleotide diversity of Ma3, an important maturity ge...

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) originated in the semi-arid tropics and generally is sensitive to low-temperature stress. Chilling stresses include low temperature (below 20 °C) and freezing injury (below 0 °C). In this study seed germination and seedling growth of three sorghum genotypes (KFS1, KFS2 and Speedfeed) were examined under four temperature regimes (35/15, 20/10, 13/10 and 11/8) conditi...

Plant sterols (PS) and policosanols (PC) have been attributed with plasma cholesterol-lowering properties in humans. Hexane extracts from grain sorghum, corn and their distillers dried grain with solubles (DDGS), an important co-product of ethanol production, contain these health promoting compounds, which could be used to develop health promoting dietary products. However, limited information ...

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to characterize genetic diversity in 30 sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] accessions conserved in the national gene bank of Botswana. This collection represents the three sorghum-growing agro-ecological zones in the country. Ten microsatellite primer pairs were used, and these generated a total of 53 alleles with three to seventeen alleles per ...