Genomics breeding approaches for developing Sorghum bicolor lines with stress resilience and other agronomic traits

Sorghum, also known as great millet, is a major cereal crop that feeds over 500 million people in more than 100 countries, especially in Africa and Asia. It can grow well under harsh environmental conditions, such as drought, heat, salinity, and soils that are nutritionally poor. The crop is water- and nitrogen-efficient with C₄ photosynthesis system and a relatively small genome of about 730 Mb. Its genome has been sequenced and annotated, revealing significant genetic variation and genomics resources. Despite being drought tolerant, there is a great degree of variation among the diverse lines of germplasm for drought and drought associated traits, and hence resilience to drought and other stresses need to be studied through the integration of phenomics and genomics technologies. There is an urgent need to adopt advanced genomics and high-throughput technologies to find candidate genes and alleles for crop traits, develop molecular markers and genomic selection (GS) models, create new genetic variation and design sorghum ideotypes that suit to the changing climate.