Evaluation of sweet sorghum hybrid parents for resistance to grain mold, anthracnose, leaf blight and downy mildew

Sweet sorghum has emerged as an important feedstock for bioethanol production in recent times. Towards an effort to develop hybrid cultivars with improved biomass and total fermentable sugar at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, India, we evaluated advanced hybrid parental lines for resistance to some important diseases (grain mold, downy mildew, anthracnose and leaf blight) that would likely affect the biomass and juice content of the stalk. With this objective 29 B-lines and 19 R-lines/ varieties were field evaluated for their responses to anthracnose, leaf blight and grain mold in the respective disease nurseries during two rainy seasons and to downy mildew in the greenhouse by artificial inoculation. Of the 29 B-lines evaluated, 21 were resistant to anthracnose, 6 to leaf blight, 2 to grain mold and 4 to downy mildew. Similarly, of the 19 R-lines/varieties evaluated 7 were resistant to anthracnose, 4 to leaf blight, 3 to grain mold and one to downy mildew. Several B-lines and R-lines showed multiple resistance to 2 or 3 diseases. From these, agronomically superior parental lines having high Brix and sugar content will be utilized for developing hybrids for high ethanol yield coupled with multiple disease resistance

R P Thakur et al., 'Evaluation of sweet sorghum hybrid parents for resistance to grain mold, anthracnose, leaf blight and downy mildew', Journal of SAT Agricultural Research, vol. 8, pp.1-5, 2011