Heritable changes of phenotype arising in plant ontogenesis by the influence of environmental factors belong to the most intriguing genetic phenomena. An unusual inheritance pattern was detected during examination of male fertility restoration in the CMS-inducing "9E" type cytoplasm of sorghum: Rf-genes were functional in self-pollinated progeny of F(1) hybrids yet were either not expressed or ...

Linkage relationships were determined among 85 maize low copy number nuclear DNA probes and seven isozyme loci in an F2 population derived from a cross of Sorghum bicolor ssp. bicolor x S. bicolor ssp. arundinaceum. Thirteen linkage groups were defined, three more than the 10 chromosomes of sorghum. Use of maize DNA probes to produce the sorghum linkage map allowed us to make several inferences...

Sorghum shoot fly, Atherigona soccata,causes substantial economic losses in sorghum globally. Cultural practices and host plant resistance are effective measures for mitigating the caused by fly. Therefore, we evaluated 32 genotypes consisting of a set 10 restorer lines, CMS (cytoplasmic male-sterile) lines their respective maintainers exhibiting resistance/susceptibility to fly along with resi...

A brown midrib (BMR) sorghum pasture was compared with normal sorghum for its effects on performance of Holstein cows in midlactation in terms of milk production and composition at grazing over three periods (Period 1: 20/01 to 31/01, Period 2: 17/02 to 28/02, Period 3: 19/03 to 30/03). Forty Holstein cows were grouped according to pre-experimental milk production (22.4 ± 4.2 kg/d milk), live w...

In a 3-year field study, population densities of Belonolaimus longicaudatus and other plant-parasitic nematodes and crop yields were compared between potato (Solanum tuberosum) cropping systems where either sorghum-sudangrass (Sorghum bicolor x S. arundinaceum) or velvetbean (Mucuna pruriens) was grown as a summer cover crop. Population densities of B. longicaudatus, Paratrichodorus minor, Tyle...

A dual-marker plasmid containing the selectable marker gene, manA, and the reporter gene, sgfp, was used to transform immature sorghum embryos by employing an Agrobacterium-mediated system. Both genes were under the control of the ubi1 promoter in a binary vector pPZP201. The Escherichia coli phosphomannose isomerase (PMI) gene, pmi, was used as the selectable marker gene and mannose was used a...

The completed rice genome sequence will accelerate progress on the identification and functional classification of biologically important genes and serve as an invaluable resource for the comparative analysis of grass genomes. In this study, methods were developed for sequence-based alignment of sorghum and rice chromosomes and for refining the sorghum genetic/physical map based on the rice gen...

Sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is a multipurpose crop (food, feed, fodder and fuel) that has the potential as an alternative biofuel feedstock without impacting food and fodder security. This chapter entitled ‘‘Sweet sorghum: From theory to practice’’ discusses on the historical developments in sweet sorghum and immense range of genetic variability that was available in major sorgh...

Sorghum grows well in arid and semi-arid agroecological zones and is thus one of the most important cereals in the Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).3 Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger lead sorghum production per capita in SSA. Per capita consumption is dominated by Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Chad. Ethiopia is also a major producer and consumer of sorghum.4 FAO data from ...