Utilizing genomic resources for understanding the stay-green QTLs interactions in SorghumK GManasaauthorS PDeshpandeauthorSorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is a fifth most important cereal crop in the world providing food, fodder/forage and bio-fuel. The postrainy sorghum crop in India is grown on residual moisture and inadvertently faces terminal drought. “Stay-green” (delayed senescence) is a post-flowering drought tolerance response, which help plants to maintain photosynthetically active leaf area and continue to fill their grains normally under stress. Sorghum crop is referred to express functional type of staygreen and the trait has been mapped to six major QTLs viz., Stg1, Stg2, Stg3A, Stg3B, StgC and Stg4. However, the gap in understanding the key mechanism has not been deciphered clearly. In this scenario to understand the actual mechanism of the stay-green pathway the information from different crops on candidate genes responsible for stay-green phenotype were considered viz., STAY-GREEN (SGR) along with one or two homologous (SGR1or NYE1/SGRL); Pheophytin Pheophorbide Hydrolase (PPH); Pheophorbide a Oxygenase (PAO); Red Chlorophyll Catabolite Reductase (RCCR); Non-Yellow Coloring (NYC) and it’s homologous NYC1-Like (NOL); 7-Hydroxymethyl Chlorophyll a Reductase (HCAR) from Zea mays, Arabidopsis thaliana and Orzya sativa. Apart from these, senescence associated genes SAG2, SAG102 and SAG39 were also considered from Arabidopsis thaliana and Orzya sativa respectively. The sequence and functional/annotation information for these genes retrieved for sequence similarity search and it has revealed 45 to 88 % of similarity in sorghum. The mapping of these candidate gene sequences within the defined QTL regions contributing for Stay-green has given an insight to utilize the re-sequencing data for improved drought tolerance in sorghum.SorghumGenetics and Genomics2017-02Conference or Workshop Item