Sorghum - icrisat

Importance of Sorghum in
Global Agriculture
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor [L.] Moench),
the world’s fourth major cereal in terms of
production, and fifth in acreage following
wheat, rice, maize and barley, is a staple
food crop of millions of poor in semi-arid
tropics (SAT) of the world. It is mostly grown
as a subsistence dry land crop by resourcelimited
farmers under traditional
management conditions in SAT regions of
the Africa, Asia and Latin America, which
are frequently drought-prone and
characterized by fragile environments.
India grows the largest acreage of sorghum
in the world followed by Nigeria and
Sudan, and produces the second largest
tonnage after the US, with Nigeria, the third
largest producer. In most of the regions of
India, it is cultivated both as a rainy- and
postrainy-season crop. The yield and quality
of sorghum produce worldwide is affected
by a wide array of biotic and abiotic
constraints.
The origin and early domestication of
sorghum is hypothesized to have taken
place around 5000 – 8000 years ago in
northeastern Africa or at the Egyptian-
Sudanese border (Mann et al. 1983;
Wendorf et al. 1992) with the largest
diversity of cultivated and wild sorghum
also found in this part of Africa (deWet
1977, Doggett 1988 and Kimber 2000).
The secondary center of origin of sorghum
is the Indian Subcontinent, with evidence
for early cereal cultivation discovered at
an archaeological site in western parts of
Rojdi (Saurashtra) dating back to about
4500 before present (Vavilov 1992;
Damania 2002).
Traditional foods made from sorghum
include unfermented and fermented
breads, porridges, couscous, boiled riceresembling
foods, snacks, as well as
alcoholic beverages. Sorghum blended
with wheat flour is used in the last two
decades to produce baked products
including yeast leavened pan, hearth and
flat breads, cakes, muffins, cookies,
biscuits and flour tortillas (Badi et al.
1990). Malt drinks and malt cocoa-based
weaning food and baby food industries are
popular in Nigeria. Hard endosperm
sorghum is used extensively in southeast
Asia for noodles and related products
(Murty and Kumar 1995). Sorghum grain
is one of the major ingredients in swine,
poultry and cattle feed in the western
hemisphere, China and Australia (Bramel-
Cox et al. 1995), however, demand for
grain sorghum in poultry feed depends
largely on the price of maize. Sorghum is
also grown for forage and is commonly
grown in northern India and fed to animals
as a green chop, silage or hay. Sweet
sorghum is used to a limited extent in
producing sorghum syrup and jaggery in
India and of late it is gaining importance
in the ethanol production.
Sorghum grain and stalk productivity
improvement resulted from partnership
research efforts globally offer a vast scope
for industrial utilization apart from food
and feed, thereby improving the economy
of developing countries and reduces the
need for imports. The popularity of hybrids
in Asia, especially in India and China has
significantly improved income level of
seed growers through hybrid seed
production activities. Sorghum, therefore
assumes greater importance in the
economies of several countries in Africa
and Asia largely inhabited by resourcelimited
farmers besides being a
subsistence food staple.
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