Recipient Organization
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
WEST LAFAYETTE,IN 47907
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Sorghum in the United States is cultivated on about 6 million acres annually (down from 16 million in 1980s), mainly on marginal lands in the arid and semi-arid regions of the Great Plains. The inherent resilience of the crop and its low input requirement make it a profitable and low risk option in marginal areas (Assefa et al., 2014). Sorghum is fertilized at only 50 to 60% rate used for maize, seed price per unit is cheaper and covers more land area, and the crop requires less water to grow. Analysis of fourteen years of maize and sorghum grain price and production data in Kansas and Nebraska determined that, when sorghum price is set at 87% of maize, it was more profitable to grow sorghum in all areas where maize yield was less than 6.4 tons/ha (Staggenborg et al., 2008). Mean grain yield for maize for majority of the counties in Kansas was less than 6.5t/ha in 2022; wherever yields were higher, it was likely that supplemental irrigation was provided. About 2 million out of 5 million maize acres in the state are irrigated.Grain sorghum serves as the second major feed source for the nation's livestock industry. It is also widely grown for forage/silage, especially the low lignin brown mid-rib (bmr) cultivars have been widely embraced by the dairy industry (Oba et al., 1999; Oliver et al., 2004). Moreover, sorghum has found new applications in biofuel and beverage industries in recent years.Sorghum grain is rich in health promoting polyphenolic compounds and consumers have begun to look at the crop as healthy food/feed ingredient. Anti-oxidants found in its bran layer and its low glycemic index offer numerous health benefits including reduction of proliferation of cancer cells (Awika et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2021), reduction of bad cholesterol (Carr et al., 2005), low blood sugar spikes (Awika and Rooney, 2004; Awika et al., 2004; Cisse et al., 2018) and prevention or delay progression of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's (Rezaee et al., 2021).Due to the package of desirable attributes, the interest to explore and develop the crop for various applications has increased in recent years. Nevertheless, the crop has not received the attention it deserves, public and private investment on the improvement of the crop is meager and thus technology options available to producers are limited. The existing sorghum technology delivery model rarely responds to the needs of farmers operating in niche environments. Farmers are growing decades-old hybrids not developed for their target environment often using management technologies adopted from other crops. This project focuses on exploiting genetic technologies developed over the last decades to identify novel hybrids that are adapted to local conditions and combine two or more attributes.Sorghum research at Kansas State and Purdue Universities represent efforts by public sorghum breeding programs working to address the production challenges faced by the growers' community. Both Universities are actively engaged in the development of sorghum technologies to meet local and international needs. Over the last decade, series of commercially viable parental lines have been developed by these programs. Tests conducted across the US and international locations have confirmed the outstanding performance of hybrids derived from these lines. Sorghum growers in the United States would greatly benefit from having hybrid technology that fits to their specific conditions.The overarching goal of the project is to increase growers' profitability through development and deployment of novel sorghum technologies that have superior local and regional adaptation to maximize productivity. We propose to exploit elite genetic materials recently developed by public breeding programs at Kansas State University, Purdue University and USDA-ARS, and technical expertise in diverse disciplines to identify superior locally and regionally adapted hybrids for deployment on farmers' fields. The project will also tap into the experiences of seed industries in promotion and marketing of new technologies, and evaluation and demonstration of elite hybrid combinations across states. In addition to yield and agronomic adaptation, the project aims to promote hybrids with improved nutritional composition to maximize their application as a food and feed ingredient and thus enhance the competitiveness of sorghum and related industries.The specific objectives are:1) Evaluate novel sorghum hybrid technology enhanced for yield potential and nutritional quality (protein and essential amino acid content).2) Study the effects of nitrogen fertilization and crop management practices on grain protein content in high protein hybrids.3) Validation and promotion of selected hybrids with superior agronomic and nutritional performance on farmers' fields.The rational for the project is that because large companies tend to focus on bigger market opportunities, the needs of farmers operating in niche ecologies is always overlooked. Even in the major sorghum belt, the delivery of hybrid technology is slow forcing farmers to grow decades old hybrids as opposed to corn where hybrid replacement rate is much faster. This project is expected to fill this gap by providing new genetics for exploiting pocket environments while also availing locally adapted advanced genetic technologies for the major sorghum production environments. It will bring together resources and experiences from key players across the sorghum value chain including sorghum breeding/genetics, grain chemistry, production agronomy and the seed industry. The target products are expected to integrate key agronomic merits, plant attributes of biological and economic value (drought tolerance, yield potential and disease resistance) and nutritional attributes (protein content, amino acid balance and grain quality) to derive productivity and enhance utilization.Depending on their nutritional composition, parental lines targeted for this project will be sorted into "regular" and "high protein" categories. The lines will be grown at a common location for synthesizing the initial test cross hybrids by categories. Dozens of crosses will be made between the parental categories to create mix of hybrid between regular and high protein parents for comparison. The resulting hybrids will be evaluated in two environments on non-replicated plots (Obj. 1.1). Data will be recorded on agronomic parameters for both test categories. Grain samples from agronomically promising high protein hybrid category will be subjected to nutritional analysis. Selected hybrids from both categories will be further evaluated in multiple environments across Indiana, Kansas Nebraska and Texas (Obj. 1.2). At the same time selected high protein hybrids and checks will be tested under varying nitrogen treatments to determine optimal N rate for protein accumulation (Obj. 2). Finally, about half dozen hybrids from both categories will be selected and evaluated on large plots under farmers management to validate both agronomic and nutritional performance (Obj 3.1 and 3.2). The field plots will be showcased to stakeholders through field days and feedback from relevant players will be gathered. Data collected from all activities will be analyzed using appropriate statistical tools. Promising hybrids sets and N management practices will be selected for use in target environments. The results will be published on referred journals and presented in workshops and conferences. The original and summarized data will be deposited in public repositories for use by interested parties.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Recent efforts by Kansas State University (KSU) sorghum breeding program have generated diverse set of parental lines that possess key traits for enhancing yield potential and nutritional value (high protein content and essential amino acids). Similar efforts by the Purdue program have identified lines enhanced for drought tolerance and high grain quality. Preliminary evaluation of hybrids from the KSU lines exhibited superior agronomic performance across a range of environments with many of them outyielding commercial check hybrids. Similarly, hybrids from high protein parents showed outstanding performance with several of them expressing higher or comparable yield potential with the checks and have 20-50% higher protein and essential amino acids lysine and leucine. Hybrids derived from Purdue lines have been extensively tested under dryland conditions in Africa and in several environments in Indiana. They were exceptionally tolerant to pre- and post-flowering drought stress.This project aims to exploit these lines in a systematic cross combination to identify a set of hybrids with outstanding performance suited to the diverse agroecology in major and minor sorghum growing regions. The overarching goal of the project is to increase growers' profitability through development and deployment of novel sorghum technologies that have superior local and regional adaptation across major and minor sorghum producing regions.The specific objectives are:1) Evaluate novel sorghum hybrid technology enhanced for yield potential and nutritional quality (protein and essential amino acid content).2) Study the effects of nitrogen fertilization and crop management practices on grain protein content in high protein hybrids.3) Validation and promotion of selected hybrids with superior agronomic and nutritional performance on farmers' fields.
Project Methods
Based on their nutritional profile, parental lines selected for the study will be sorted in to "regular" and "high protein" categories. Below are the specific objectives and brief description of the methodologies.1. Evaluate the performance and adaptation of sorghum hybrids enhanced for yield potential and nutritional quality1.1. Synthesis of test cross hybrids and preliminary evaluation (Tesso, Adeyanju,)Up to 40 regular and 30 high protein male and female parent lines will be grown in separate crossing blocks to create up to 400 regular and 225 high protein hybrids. Selected lines from regular and high protein types will also be intercrossed to create hybrid mixes between the two categories.The hybrids (regular and high protein sets) will be tested under optimal (Indiana) and stress (Kansas) environments in year 1 using augmented design along with four check hybrids. Six meters long paired row plots will be used. Seed and fertilizer rates will be as recommended for the locations. At flowering, three heads in high protein hybrid plots will be covered with pollination bag to guard from random pollen. The bags will be removed once pollination is complete to let grain filling to proceed under normal condition. Prior to combine harvest, the bagged heads will be collected, threshed and the grains scanned with NIR, and promising hybrids further tested using wet chemistry methods. Dala will be collected on all relevant agronomic parameters. The data will be subjected to statistical analysis using Statistical Analysis Systems software (SAS, 2023) models appropriate for the design. Based on agronomic performance, and protein data (NIR and wet lab), selected entries will be promoted for further testing.1.2. Multi-environment evaluation of hybrid performance for adaptation to local environments (Tesso, Adeyanju, Quinn, collaborators)Seeds of hybrids advanced from the preliminary evaluation will be increased. Approximately 200-300 regular, 100-150 high protein and a dozen regular × high protein or high protein × regular hybrid mixes will be evaluated at a total of 14 environments (4 each in IN, KS, and TX, and 2 in NE each season) over two seasons. The hybrids will be divided into sets of manageable sizes (50-60 hybrids including checks). The tests will be laid in RCBD with three replications. Test sites include agricultural experiment stations, seed industry sites, USDA-ARS centers, and cooperating farmers' fields. The plots will be six meters long double rows spaced 0.75 meters apart. Field preparation, seed rates and fertilization will be as recommended for the respective locations. Plots will be regularly supervised, and data will be recorded on common agronomic parameters, diseases and insect pests. The PIs will regularly communicate with onsite collaborators and visit the fields at least twice during the crop season. For high protein hybrids, three heads in each plot will be bagged prior to flowering to prevent contamination by random pollen and will be removed once pollination is complete. At maturity, the bagged heads will be harvested and processed. The grains will be characterized for hardness (Bean et al., 2006) and subjected to NIR to predict the protein and amino acid profile (Peiris et al., 2019; 2020).Prior to harvest, lodging score and the overall crop feature will be rated using a 1-5 scale (IBPGR, 1993) with "1" being excellent and "5" worst. Five heads will be sampled from each plot for recording yield components (panicle weight, panicle yield, number of seeds per panicle, and thousand kernel weight). The yield data will be captured using the harvest master software mounted on a plot combine.Data will be analyzed in the same way for both hybrid categories using the Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS, 2023). Analysis will be conducted for individual locations to identify cultivars with niche adaptation. Combined analysis will also be performed to identify hybrids with stable performance across environments.2. Study the effects of nitrogen (N) fertilization and crop management practices on grain protein content in high protein hybrids (Tesso, Adeyanju, Quinn, Perumal)The effect of N management on grain protein content will be investigated using ten (8 high protein and 2 check) hybrids, four levels of N fertilization and two N application methods. The N levels will be Control (the recommended rate for the test locality), Control +10%, Control+20%, and Control-10%. The N application methods will be a full dose application at planting and split application where the first dose of 40lb N is applied at planting, and the second dose (varies according to locations) applied 30 days after planting.The study will be laid in split plot with RCBD where N fertilizer application methods will be assigned to the main plot and factorial combination of the hybrids (10) and N levels to the sub-plot. The study will be conducted at four locations (Indiana and Kansas) over two seasons using four row plots replicated four times. Soil samples will be collected prior to planting. Plant population will be as recommended for the specific area, and plots will be kept free of weeds.Data will be recorded on common agronomic parameters including yield and yield components, biomass, leaf area and nitrogen uptake. The PI (Tesso), Co-PI (Quinn) and a graduate student will coordinate with the Digital Agriculture Institute and ISCIC (Indiana Soybean and Corn Innovation Center) to capture and analyze the RGB and multispectral data using UAV. Prior to harvesting panicle samples will be collected from each plot to determine yield components and to determine total protein and amino acid profile in high protein hybrids. Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS, 2023) will be used to analyze the data. The effects of genotype, nitrogen fertilizer and their interaction with environment will be determined. Results will be interpreted in relation to the historical weather and soil data for the test environments to estimate performance of different nitrogen management practices. 3. Validation and promotion of selected hybrids with superior agronomic and nutritional performance on farmers' fields (Tesso, Adeyanju, Quinn, collaborators)Half dozen top performing hybrids from each of the regular and high protein groups will be selected and their seed increased using isolation plots and/or manual crossing. At least 20 farmers across Texas, Kansas Nebraska and Indiana will be enlisted to participate in large plot testing of the hybrids. The PI will work with CO-PIs and collaborators across the states to identify growers for implementing this activity. Approximately two-kilogram seeds of each of the hybrids and the checks will be handed to participating growers. The plots will be planted and managed by the farmers themselves. At flowering, three plants in the high protein plots will be covered with pollination bags as described above. The PIs and collaborators will regularly supervise project sites. Observations will be made on overall crop performance, crop stand, stress response and standability. Feedback will be gathered from participating growers.At maturity, the bagged heads will be harvested, threshed and the grain samples scanned with NIR before sending for wet chemistry analysis. Field days will be organized to demonstrate the performance of the hybrids at selected farmers plots across the states. At harvest, each farmer will record grain yield. Since the plots are not replicated, the test locations will be pooled by geographic proximity to create clusters of environments. Locations within a cluster will be used as replicate to conduct statistical analysis. These combined with data from other activities will be used to identify the most promising hybrids in both regular and high protein categories.?