US-aided project to help sorghum

An international team will work towards sustainable intensification of sorghum production in a $4.98 million initiative recently funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The project will use new genomics tools to address urgent needs for a more drought resilient food supply and increase rates of sorghum improvement to better meet long-term population growth, a release from the city-based ICRISAT said.

The international team is being led by the University of Georgia's Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory, the release said.

"The project offers a unique opportunity to fully exploit the potential of new genomic tools in improving efficiency and effectiveness of sorghum improvement programmes," ICRISAT Director General William D Dar said.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in its stations in Africa and headquarters here, will work on improving sorghum's drought and heat tolerance and improving its ratooning ability, the release said.

Sorghum is an important dryland crop grown for food, feed and fodderôforage in India.Seventy percent of sorghum grain produced is used as food and the rest for feed industry and other industrial uses.

Although sorghum is the most drought tolerant of the world's major cereal crops, moisture stress remains one of the major constraints to its production.

With a worldwide water crisis looming, a primary goal of the new project is to improve drought and heat tolerance, mitigating threats of drought to food security, it said.

The research team includes partners from ICRISAT, Jimma University (Ethiopia), The Land Institute (Kansas in USA), and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC)-South Africa.

The researchers also plan to explore transforming sorghum production systems by initiating the development of its perennial varieties, the release added.