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ARS Home » Plains Area » College Station, Texas » Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center » Crop Germplasm Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #317296
Title: Registration of 40 converted germplasm sources from the reinstated sorghum conversion program

Author
item Klein, Robert - Bob
item MILLER, FREDERICK - Mmr Genetics, Llc
item Bean, Scott
item KLEIN, PATRICIA - Texas A&M University

Submitted to: Journal of Plant Registrations
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/4/2015
Publication Date: 1/4/2016
Citation: Klein, R.R., Miller, F.R., Bean, S., Klein, P.E. 2016. Registration of 40 converted germplasm sources from the reinstated sorghum conversion program. Journal of Plant Registrations. 45:57-61.

Interpretive Summary: A wealth of genetic diversity and valuable traits exist in the ARS sorghum germplasm collections, in particular those that originate from the Sudan and Ethiopia. Owing to its tropical origin, sorghum requires short day lengths to flower and hence much of the ARS collection of 36,000 accessions flowers too late or is too tall to be useful for seed production in temperate-zone environments. To provide geneticists in the U.S. with new sources of genetic diversity, we converted 40 tropical sorghums to early flowering, dwarf sorghums with desirable traits to enhance sorghum grain yield and disease resistance. These converted sorghums represent success in exploiting the wealth of previously unusable ARS sorghum germplasm in development of higher-producing sorghum varieties for farmers in the U.S. and worldwide.

Technical Abstract: Forty sources of late-maturing sorghum germplasm registered with NPGS as genetic stocks were converted to early-maturing, dwarf-height BC1F3 families and were released by the National Sorghum Foundation, the United Sorghum Checkoff Program, the USDA-ARS, and NuSeed/MMR Genetics in 2014. Conversion was accomplished by crossing photoperiod-sensitive tropical accessions to elite inbred BTx406 during the winter in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with selection of early-maturing, short genotypes within F2 segregating populations under long-day, summer conditions in Texas. Early-flowering short F2 selections were genotyped, and one F2 plant with the greatest proportion of the exotic genome from each accession was then backcrossed to the plant introduction. The resulting BC1F1 was self-pollinated and selection of early-maturing, short genotypes within BC1F2 segregating populations were made under long-day, summer conditions in Texas. Early-flowering, short BC1F2 selections were genotyped, and one BC1F2 plant with the greatest proportion of the exotic genome was self-pollinated in Puerto Vallarta. The resulting backcross-derived families represent new sources of germplasm from the USDA-ARS sorghum collection of a height and maturity readily usable to temperate-zone areas of the world.