Abstract:
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is the king of cereal crops in the arid and semiarid
tropics, where drought is a recurrent problem affecting crop production because of erratic
amount and distribution of rainfall. Although sorghum has a genetic potential to withstand the
effect of drought, it is being affected by the current climate change scenarios. The present
experiment was conducted with the view of assessing sorghum variability to transpiration
efficiency, and association among traits using 101 sorghum genotypes in greenhouse facility at
Melkassa Agricultural Research Center during 2021/22. The design of the experiment was
RCBD with two replications. Data analyses were computed using SAS 9.4. The analysis of
variance showed significant difference among genotypes for all traits considered, indicating the
presence of considerable genetic variability among tested genotypes. High heritability coupled
with high genetic advance as percentage of the mean (GAM) was recorded for plant
transpiration efficiency and shoot transpiration efficiency. Moderate heritability coupled with
high GAM were recorded for total dry biomass, shoot dry biomass, root dry biomass, shoot fresh
biomass, water use, and leaf area, suggesting the possibility of improving these traits through
direct selection. Correlation analysis revealed that plant transpiration efficiency had positively
significant genotypic and phenotypic correlations with shoot transpiration efficiency, total dry
biomass, shoot fresh biomass, root dry biomass, shoot fresh biomass and leaf chlorophyll
content. Path coefficient analysis showed that total dry biomass was directly affected by plant
transpiration efficiency, shoot transpiration efficiency, shoot fresh biomass, leaf chlorophyll
content, leaf area, water use and leaf number. Cluster analysis grouped genotypes into six
clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance was between cluster II and cluster V, suggesting
the possibility of improving genotypes through hybridization. The four principal components
with eigenvalues greater than one accounted for about 79% of the total variation among
genotypes, indicating that the traits considered were appropriate to detect variation among
tested genotypes. Overall, the present study indicates the presence of considerable genetic
variability to improve transpiration efficiency of sorghum and to develop adaptable and heigh
yielder sorghum varieties for drought stress environment.