Sorghum landraces perform better than a commonly used cultivar under terminal drought, especially on sandy soil

Sauer, A M and Loftus, S and Schneider, E M and Sudhabindu, K and Hajjarpoor, A and Sivasakthi, K and Kholova, J and Dippold, M A and Ahmed, M A (2024) Sorghum landraces perform better than a commonly used cultivar under terminal drought, especially on sandy soil. Plant Stress, 13. pp. 1-15. ISSN 2667-064X

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Abstract

Landraces of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] have a high potential for drought adaptations to increasingly extreme climates. We investigated the performance of five sorghum genotypes (four landraces and one commonly grown elite line) under water-limited conditions. Plants were grown until maturity in field-like columns on soils of four textures (silty clay, sandy loam, loamy sand, sand), which were dried during flowering stage down to 30 % usable field capacity. Plant transpiration, physiological characteristics, and yield were measured. For most of the measured parameters, the interaction between genotypes and soils was statistically significant. Alongside the gradient in available water between soils, plants had the highest total transpiration, transpiration efficiency (TE), harvest index (HI), and nutrient uptake in silty clay, steadily reduced towards soils with higher sand content. Especially in sandy soil, all measured plant performance parameters were significantly reduced compared to the other soils. There was a significant negative relationship between later flowering time and HI. While the elite cultivar M35–1 showed the highest TE, it suffered from late flowering and yield loss on all soils, especially when growing on sandy soil. The landraces IS 29914 and IS 8348 had a stable HI irrespective of their lowest TE. The shorter the plant, the better it coped with water and nutrient limitation and high transpiration efficiency was not connected to water conservation. The study overall emphasizes the high potential of sorghum landraces to overcome more extreme droughts as imposed by climate change. It also underlines the importance and strong interaction effect of soil texture on plant performance and transpiration efficiency, which is crucial to be considered in crop production. This outlines that specifically regions with sandy soils, characterized by low water-holding capacities, need genotypes that efficiently utilize the limited available water and nutrient resources – a genetic potential hidden in many landraces.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Global Research Program - Accelerated Crop Improvement
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Landraces, Transpiration efficiency, Drought tolerance, Harvest index, Soil water retention, Plant physiology
Subjects:	Others > Drought Tolerance Others > Soil Others > Plant Physiology
Depositing User:	Mr Nagaraju T
Date Deposited:	12 Feb 2025 05:17
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2025 05:17
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/12951
Official URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	UNSPECIFIED
Acknowledgement:	We thank the team of crop physiology at ICRISAT for their support during the field work, Andreas Kolb (University of Bayreuth, Germany) for his help with the soil measurements, and Karin Schmidt (University of Göttingen, Germany) for pressure digestion and nutrient analysis of plants and soils.
Links:	Google Scholar

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