Sorghum Improvement
Sorghum Improvement Program
The national sorghum research program is coordinated from MARC to improve the quality and productivity of the crop. The program has released thirty-one sorghum varieties (17 for the dry lowland, 6 for highlands, and 8 for intermediate agroecologies). From the total released sorghum varieties, five of them are hybrids. In addition, the program released five finger millets and one pearl millet varieties. The average productivity of the released varieties with improved management practices is 4.8 t/ha, which is two-fold compared to the current country average. There are also outstanding varieties on the pipeline for release. Several research findings and guidelines have also been published on various publications.
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Research on improved sorghum technologies addressed biotic and abiotic factors affecting sorghum production and contributed to increased adoption by focusing on the preferred end use quality and plant biomass traits. During the past 25 years, the program released 31 sorghum varieties. From these, 17 were for the dry lowlands, of which five were hybrids, six for the highland and eight for the intermediate environments. In addition, the program released five finger millet varieties for the intermediate and one pearl millet variety for the dry lowlands. The average productivity of the released sorghum varieties with improved management practices is 4.8 t/ha, which is two-fold compared to the current national average. This indicates the potential for increasing productivity of sorghum with the available technologies.
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The major challenge is to translate this into smallholder gain. In the past decade, demonstration activities revealed the increasing demand for improved sorghum varieties such as Melkam, Dekeba, and ESH-1 in the dry lowlands. In partnership with various institutions, over 66,000 farmers participated in the demonstration of improved technologies. Considering the overall low genetic gain of the released sorghum varieties (~0.85 % year), and lower adoption rate, the breeding program has introduced demand led breeding and use of modern tools like electronic data capturing and, modern trial designs, to increase efficiency thereby enhancing genetic gain. Since the inception of sorghum research a wealth of experiences has been gained and passed onto the new generation of researchers. This has contributed to the achievement the program has registered in research and development endeavors.
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