Abstract

Thickly sown sorghum was characterised by reduced mean for all characters other than plant stand, fodder yield, total soluble solids and days to 50% flowering. In spite of the reduction in mean for majority of characters in thickly sown sorghum, there was 11% increase in the total dry matter production mostly accounted by an increased number of plants. Thinly sown sorghum had a high harvest index (19.1) indicating the efficient partitioning of the dry matter more in favour of grain formation as compared to 10.7 in thickly sown sorghum. Plant height, stem thickness, leaf length, total soluble sollds and days to 50% flowering had a high degree of genotypic variability in both the thin and thick sown sorghum. The genetic coefficient of variability varied with the character and also with the thin or thick sowing. Differential heritability values in thin and thick sown sorghum were recorded for fodder yield, earhead length, earhead weight and stem thickness. Total soluble solids in both the thin and thick sown sorghum and grain yield and stem thickness in thick sown sorghum had high heritability combined with high genetic advance and this indicated that individual plant selection would be effective in improvement of these characters.

Keywords: Fodder Sorghum, Variability.