In Vitro Screening for Drought Tolerance in Different Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) Varieties

Abstract

Drought is one of the complex environmental factors affecting growth and yield of sorghum in arid and semi-arid areas of the world. Sixteen elite sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L) Moench) genotypes were evaluated for their genetic potential to drought tolerance at callus induction and plant regeneration stage for drought tolerance. The non-ionic water soluble polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) of molecular weight 6000 was used as osmoticum to simulate water stress. The factorial experiment was laid down in a completely randomized design which comprised of a combination of two factors (genotypes and five PEG stress level; 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0% (w/v) treatments). Data were recorded for callus induction efficiency, callus fresh weight, embryogenic callus percentage and plant regeneration percentage. Significant differences were observed among the genotypes, treatments and their interactions for the evaluated plant traits suggesting a great amount of variability for drought tolerance in sorghum. The correlation analysis also revealed strong and significant association between embryogenic callus percent and plant regeneration percent as well as between embryogenic callus percent and plant regeneration percent. By taking into consideration all the measured traits, Mann Whitney rank sum test revealed that 76T1#23 and Teshale followed by Meko, Gambella-1107 and Melkam showed better drought stress tolerance. Therefore they are recommended to be used as parents for genetic analysis, gene mapping and improvement of drought tolerance while Chelenko, Hormat and Raya appear to be drought sensitive.