CBGG

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolour (L.) Moench) is an important source of food in many semi-desert and tropical areas of the world that are usually affected by drought, resulting in reduced yield. Despite its relatively better adaptation to moisture stress environments, yield loss in sorghum due to drought is very high. This investigation was undertaken to estimate components of genetic variability amongst Ethiopian’s landraces for yield and yield related traits under moisture stress conditions. Two hundred Ethiopian sorghum landrace collections selected based on adaptation to moisture stress environment and two hundred genotypes from the reference of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) were evaluated during the 2018 growing seasons at two locations, Sheraro and Miesso that represent dry lowland agro-ecologies. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences amongst the germplasms at Sheraro and Miesso for seven traits, showing that there is a broad range of genetic variability among them. The highest grain yield values (kg/ha) were 7701.33 and 3106.67 for Sheraro and Miesso respectively under rain fed. Depending on the trait studied, the values for coefficient of variance for phenotypes were higher than that of coefficient of variance for genotype at both sites, indicating that the environmental effect had a crucial role in the manifestation of these characters. Likewise, heritability ranged from 30.57% (for panicle length) to 75.83% (for grain yield from 47.4% (for leaf area) to 96.72% (for days to maturity) at Miesso. The extent of phenotypic correlation coefficients for most of the traits were smaller than their corresponding genotypic correlation coefficients, except for a few cases, which indicates the camouflaging effect of the environment in the total manifestation of the traits. Out of the total six and eight components from both Sheraro and Miesso respectively, the first three principal components described most of the total variations. At both sites, the D2 analysis grouped the four hundred germplasms into six clusters with variable number of entries in each cluster. Based on the data from both sites, selecting germplasms with high thousand grain weight and long panicle length could be used to select genotypes with high grain yield. Accessions 239130, 220255, 235810 and 220253 were identified as best performers in drought tolerance. With further evaluation, these genotypes could be used as varieties and/or breeding materials in developing drought tolerant sorghum varieties.

genetic variability; heritability; genetic distance; sorghum