Current status and application prospects of sweet sorghum breeding in China.

Sweet sorghum(Sorghum bicolor) is a natural variant of grain sorghum and has a remarkable ability to accumulate sugars in its juicy stems and to produce high biomass in low-input agricultural systems.China is committed to develop sweet sorghum into a dedicated biofuel crop and has set clear milestones for sweet sorghum breeding.In this review we briefly described the origins,cultivation history and germplasm collection of sweet sorghum and devoted much of the text to discuss the problem of the hybrid and molecular breeding of sweet sorghum in China.We argue that sweet sorghum breeding is still in its infancy and primarily adopts the grain sorghum system.The goals of and approaches to speed up the biofuel sweet sorghum breeding have been discussed.