Morphological characterization of sweet sorghum genotypes across environments

Abstract

Sweet sorghum being a C4 crop accumulates more sugar in its stalks, also suitable for biofuel production and has high degree of tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Morphological characteristics i.e., plant height, plant biomass, leaves on the stem, panicle length and yield of crude biomass of sweet sorghum genotypes were studied across different environments. Environments and genotype by environment interaction (GEI) had a significant effect on the yield of crude biomass. The smallest yield of crude biomass was achieved in 2016 (42.54 t ha(-1)), which was found significantly lower as compared to that in 2014 and 2015. The average plant height had a significant and positive correlation with the number of leaves (0.54) and number of leaves had highly a significant and positive correlation with the mass of stem (0.46) and panicle length (0.61). Biomass yield was positively and significantly correlated with precipitation (0.72) and negatively significantly correlated with temperature (-0.57). In breeding of sweet sorghum, the highest attention should be given to biomass yield as it manage the whole variation and controlled by polygenes.