Collection of Rabi sorghum germplasm I. Northern Karnataka and adjoining areas of Andhra Pradesh

Systematic rabi sorghum germplasm collection in India were initiated jointly by the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources and International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. The collections from Karnataka could be a good addition to the rabi sorghum collections. As most of them are grown under residual soil moisture conditions, these are likely to be good source for drought tolerance. Most of them have attractive grain characters which can be used to improve rabi sorghums. The pop sorghum and sugary grain (wrinkled) forms are good addition to the limited accessions in world collection of sorghum germplasm. They can be used to breed cultivars for alternative uses of sorghum. Majority of the samples collected in this mission belong to the race Durra with a wide range of diversity. Landraces collected seem to be useful in sorghum improvement programmes. Sorghums with large glumes (membranaceum group) were observed to be bird resistant.