Abstract:
Sorghum is one of the most important cereal crops in Ethiopia. Production and productivity
of Sorghum is constrained by frequent drought and prolonged dry spell especially over the
last two decades in Ethiopia leading to food insecurity. The aim of the current study was to
evaluate BCNAM populations for drought tolerance, analyze the genetics of traits and
identify genotypes with desirable drought tolerance traits. The experiment was conducted at
Sheraro, Northern Ethiopia. A total 1264 genotypes were evaluated using an alpha lattice
design with two replications. Analyses of variance for quantitative characters showed highly
significant difference among the progenies (P< 0.01) for all traits indicating possibility for
selection. Similarly, parental lines also exhibited significant difference (p<0.05) for most of
the traits except chlorophyll content at flowering, panicle width (cm), grain weight per
panicle (g) and number of panicles per plant. Some progenies were early flowering including
lines 32 (Teshale x IS14446) (61.525 days), 1226 (Teshale x IS32234) (62.9 days), 1099
(Teshale x IS16044) (64.53days), 749 (Teshale x IS14298 (66.04 days) and 305 Teshale x
IS15428 (69.01 days). Whereas, lines 673 (Teshale x IS3583) (79.03 days), 903 (Teshale x
IS16173)(77.68 days), 513 Teshale x IS22325 (75.2 days), 911 Teshale x IS16173 (73.73
days), and 37 Teshale x IS14446 (71.74 days) were late flowering. While the best performed
progenies in grain yield per panicle were 747TeshalexIS14298 (67.47g), 2 TeshalexIS14446
(63.87g), 107 TeshalexIS14446 (61.03g), 767 TeshalexIS14298 (58.54g) and 1239 Teshalex
IS32234 (55.89g) with the average yield of 38.21g per panicle. Traits with high GCV and
PCV values such as chlorophyll content at maturity, number of panicle per plant, grain
weight per plant and grain yield can be improved by simple selection. Chlorophyll content at
maturity, date of 50% flowering, date of 95% maturity, panicle length, shows high heritability
values indicate quick and visual selection is possible. Whereas chlorophyll content at
maturity, grain filling period and thousand seed weight were exhibited high GAM shows
additive gen action. Progenies 747, 479, 2, 702, and 914 were promising genotype for further
evaluation. Principal component analysis shows 24.33%, 13.82%, 12.32%, 9.63% and 7.43%
of the variation from PC1 to PC5 respectively with the cumulative variance of 67.53%.
