THE COLLECTION MATERIAL OF GRAIN SORGHUM FOR THE SELECTION ON PRODUCTIVITY

Among the agricultural crops grain sorghum takes the most important part in the solution of the grain forage problem. It’s theoretically and practically important to find new initial material for its breeding. Thus, the study of the world collection of sorghum as the main gene pool of economic-valuable traits, the search of the most promising samples and their introduction into the breeding process will accelerate the solution of the problem. The article gives the results of the researches and the assessment of the collection material of grain sorghum according to the following traits: the duration of the vegetation period, plant height, length and width of the panicle, number of kernels per panicle, kernel weight per panicle, 1000-kernel weight and grain productivity. During the three years of study in the collection trails the forms with large panicles were selected. During the study of the collection of large size of kernels, the trait ‘1000-kernel weight’ varied from 13.6 to 52.8g. 19 samples which formed the kernels of the largest size have been selected, three of which had the weight of 1000 kernels of more than 40g. There have also been considered the early maturing forms with low height. The article presents 12 collection samples with high content of kernels, among which the varieties ‘Mestnoe (к-2736)’, ‘Sorgo prosovoe’, ‘Kafrskoe beloe’, ‘Krupnozernoe 2233’ and ’06-2029’ have the maximum parameters. The samples ‘М-60938’, ‘Sorghum vulgare’, ‘Dzhugara Uch-Ailik (к-987)’ and ‘к7295’ possess the largest weight of kernels per panicle (more than 50g) due to the large size of kernels and large amount of kernels per a plant. There have been selected the samples with the economic-valuable traits for the breeding of new highly productive hybrids and varieties of grain sorghum.