Continuing a long-standing partnership with sorghum scientists across institutes in India, a long-overdue field day showcases elite breeding lines, varieties, hybrids and hybrid show cased parental lines of sorghum at ICRISAT Hyderabad. Proceeding with all necessary precautions in place as per our COVID-19 guidelines, participants shared valuable insights on the progressive evolution in sorghum breeding with modern tools and technologies that enabled better efficiencies in breeding and selection.

1. Newsletter
Happenings
In-house version 19 March 2021, No.1898
Field day
Sorghum scientists from public and private sectors
across India gather to share insights on modern
breeding technologies
Dr Govindaraj guiding other sorghum researchers through the field.
Photo: PS Rao, ICRISAT
Continuing a long-standing partnership with sorghum
scientists across institutes in India, a long-overdue
field day showcases elite breeding lines, varieties,
hybrids and hybrid show cased parental lines of sorghum
at ICRISAT Hyderabad. Proceeding with all necessary
precautions in place as per our COVID-19 guidelines,
participants shared valuable insights on the progressive
evolution in sorghum breeding with modern tools and
technologies that enabled better efficiencies in breeding
and selection.
Welcoming sorghum researchers from the public and
private sectors across the country, Dr Harish Gandhi,
Theme Lead, Crop Improvement, and Interim Global
Head–Breeding, highlighted inclusion of new areas in
sorghum research agendas. Citing the implementation
of focused product profiles as high priority for ICRISAT’s
breeding program, he said that apart from being
considered a food grain, sorghum should be looked at
for other uses too e.g. fodder, brewery etc.
Several partners and participants joined the event
virtually. Among them was Dr Vilas Tonapi, Director,
Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), who
emphasized a holistic and focused approach to mitigate
the issues in sorghum e.g. grain mold in rainy season
sorghum, which has led to the decline in the sorghum
rainy season area; grain quality in new hybrids/varieties
in postrainy sorghum to improve the acceptability by
farmers, etc. Besides, he underlined the importance of
growing forage and biofuel segments in the rainy and
postrainy seasons. He also appreciated ICRISAT for using
new diverse germplasm lines in hybrid parental line
development and its diversification.
Dr Arvind Kumar, Deputy Director-General Research,
ICRISAT, said, “This sorghum field day is the first official
event that we’ve held after starting 100% work back in
the workplace." Hailing the public-private partnership
breeding approach, he congratulated the sorghum team
and partners, and hoped for continued collaboration to
make a difference in delivering breeding traits
germplasm and more int eh future.
Dr M Govindaraj, Senior Scientist, Sorghum Breeding,
led the group to postrainy breeding fields, presenting
field plans and pipeline materials at various generations
(~2000) and their trait specificity to participants to
enable them to make appropriate selections. He
emphasized the new method (chemically induced male
sterility) that his team is validating to estimate the
combining ability of sorghum B-line breeding pipelines
and drone phenotyping with the support of the
Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB) through Dr Vincent
Vadez (IRD, France). He recalled how in 2020, with great
support from Dr Peter Carberry, then-Director General,
CIOT staff, and other Theme Leads, critical breeding
materials were harvested during the lockdown period
and were now being displayed.