Breeding Sorghum for Forage and Feed: Status and Approaches

Forage sorghum is a warm season green fodder source with very high dry matter accumulation rate, adapted to water limited production environments. Forage sorghum cultivars derived from introgression with Sudangrass are endowed with faster growth, excellent regeneration after cutting, and resistance to foliar diseases. Developmental plasticity of sorghum aids in developing niche-adapted cultivars that maximize fodder production in the available crop window. Recent breeding efforts have resulted in enhanced quality of forage by increasing digestibility and protein content, decreasing lignin content and anti-nutrients such as HCN and tannins. The genetic improvement for use of sorghum as a feed would focus on characteristics of the grain such as color and composition of the pericarp, endosperm texture, etc., besides the grain yield. While good number of cultivars with annual, perennial, multi-cut, later flowering, low lignin, and other desirable traits have been developed in some regions, optimizing the genotype to maximize yield and quality in specific crop management situations has not been attempted in a comprehensive manner. Some of the negative associations of forage and grain yield components with quality traits need to be overcome by screening large number of germplasm and recombinant genetic stocks. Progress on these lines would make sorghum a highly competitive forage and feed crop.