Location: Grain Quality and Structure Research
Project Number: 3020-43440-002-015-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2019
End Date: Jul 31, 2024
Objective:
This project will seek to determine the interactions between environment, genetics, plant growth and sorghum grain composition. It is well known that environment can impact grain composition and end-use quality. However, less is understood about how differences in plant biology (growth, plant architecture, panicle architecture, etc.) across environments influence grain fill and ultimately, grain composition. This project will address these issues by investigating how sorghum germplasm that varies both genetically and in plant phenotype/traits also varies in grain composition when grown under diverse conditions (either in terms of management – irrigated vs. non-irrigated or in environment such as low rainfall vs. moderate rainfall locations). Furthermore, this project will also improve the development of high-throughput methods for analyzing sorghum grain composition, leveraging the amount of material that can be analyzed during this research.
Approach:
To meet the objectives of this project, genetically and phenotypically diverse sorghum germplasm will be grown under different conditions (irrigated vs. non-irrigated) or in different regions that have different climates (low rainfall vs moderate rainfall, etc.). Grain from these samples will be harvested and used for additional biochemical and physical characterization. Agronomic properties related to plant growth/architecture (especially during grain fill) and commercial sorghum production (e.g. yield) will be collected. Grain samples will be analyzed for basic grain composition (protein, starch, etc.), physical grain traits (grain hardness, weight, and diameter) and end-use quality traits such as digestibility, bioactive properties, or industrial uses such as fermentation quality or feed quality. Differences in grain composition, plant traits and agronomic properties will be analyzed across growth environments to determine relationships between plant physiology, genetics, effect of environment and grain composition. This information will be used to further identify germplasm that exhibits superior grain composition under typical sorghum growing regions of the central U.S. or that maintains quality under environmental stress typically found in these growing regions. Data will be used for genetic analysis to map quantitative trait loci or genes associated with sorghum grain composition and plant growth and how such genetic regions interact during grain fill. Grain samples from this project will also be scanned by NIR to identify variability not present in current NIR calibrations. Samples identified as outside of current calibrations will be incorporated into existing calibrations. Grain composition and quality traits not currently in NIR calibrations will also be developed to expand the utilization of NIR for rapidly analyzing large number of samples from this research project.
