November 9, 2009

Sorghum

Sorghum
The wild sorghums present a diverse array of morphological variability and have presented taxonomists with an interesting challenge.

The three main native species located in Asia an Africa are Sorghum bicolor, Sorghum propinguum and Sorghum halepense.

Sorghum bicolor subp. Arundinaceum is an allotetraploid that is found in tropical Africa, while S. propinguum shares the same chromosome number and is located in Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

S. halepense or Johnson grass is a segmental auto-allo-octoploid and is located in an overlapping zone between the other two species.

The sorghums are summer growing crops which are used in a number of ways grain sorghum for grain; sweet or folder sorghum, Sudan grass and Columbus grass for silage, green feed and grazing; and broom millet for brooms and brushware.

However, the grain is used primarily as stock-feed and is an important source for supplementing other coarse grains for this purpose.
Sorghum

Popular Posts

Other interesting articles