Project
Breeding for Productivity in Sorghum
Details
Project Code:
TAM-121
Start Date:
1984
End Date:
1991
CRSP Phase:
Not Available
Budget:
Not Available
Countries:
Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Niger, Paraguay, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Participants
Lead University:
Texas A&M University
Other Partners:
Collaborating Scientists' Institutions: SADCC/ICRISAT (Zimbabwe); Institute of Agricultural Research-IAR (Ethiopia); Bubo Dioulasso (Burkina Faso); DAR/IER, ICRISAT/Mali (Mali); IITA/USAID, NCRE (Cameroon); The Carter Center - Global 2000 (Ghana); MAWD (Zambia);ICRISAT/SAFGRAD/OAAU (Kenya); ICRISAT/International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center -CIMMYT, UANI, CIFAPMEX (Mexico); IAN Paraguay; INTA (Argentina); SRN, EAP (Honduras); University of Georgia, Mississippi State University, Purdue University (US)
Principal Investigator(s):
Fred Miller
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
None
Links
Overview
The principal objective of this project was to bring together in a deliberately focused manner all those traits which cause the production of higher yielding sorghums with acceptable or superior food quality, and adequate resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses.
Objectives
1. Develop stable, high yielding, agronomically desirable sorghums with high levels of disease, insect and agronomic stress resistance. 2. Develop food resource sorghums through evaluation of component parts and recombinations of high grain quality with weathering resistance, stable yield and resistance to environmental stresses. 3. Determine the nature of drought resistance and its behavior in high yielding sorghum germplasm. 4. Collaboratively screen or otherwise evaluate in the US and host countries, sorghum germplasm enhanced for productivity and food uses of importance to the US and LDCs. 5. Develop cooperative adaption/productivity trials empahsizing grain quality, yield and improved disease and drough resistance; distribute; evaluate; and utilize in collaborative programs. 6. Develop and distribute improved parents of hybrids, lines, and early generation breeding materials possessing productivyt and grain quality for use in Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and other unlisted host countries. 7. Determine relationships of heterotic germplasm and interactions wtih A1 and A2 cytoplasms.
Outcomes
The food type sorghums evolvoing from this project impacted the sorghum industry in the US. The industry recognized the benefits of white grain, tan plant color and a grain that will process into a food as well as being a superior poultry or livestock feed. Food use and new product development underway with sorghum will continue and with a major shift in US usage of these types of new sorghums, there will be economic improvement from sorghum in the US as well as in those countries which already consume sorghum.
