Some Aspects of Late Harvesting in the Competitive Variety Testing of Grain Sorghum

Scientific Agronomy Journal. 2023. 1(120). pp. 23-27
Breeding, seed production
УДК 633.17: 631.527
DOI: 10.34736/FNC.2023.120.1.004.23-27
Aleksej A. Shatrykin, Cand. Sci. (Agr.), e-mail: finist18101973@yandex.ru, ORCIDID 0009-0005-3658-4997; Nadezhda S. Sharko, ORCID: 0009-0005-9058-404X – «Federal Scientific Centre of Agroecology, Complex
Melioration and Protective Afforestation of the Russian Academy of Sciences» (FSC of agroecology RAS), e-mail: info@vfanc.ru, 400062, pr-t Universitetskij, 97, Vologograd, Russia
Abstract.Grain sorghum harvesting has always been associated with a number of problems because it is a late ripening crop. And the most important of these problems are weather conditions that are subject to significant fluctuations from year to year. Cool rainy weather at the time of harvesting delays the harvest date, which inevitably leads to grain losses, and sometimes they are very significant. Therefore, it is necessary to find a low-cost set of measures aimed at reducing these losses. And one of them can be breeding, namely: the creation of new varieties that are resistant to lodging and crop losses during overstocking for weeks or even months. When analyzing the breeding material in the competitive variety testing, a negative correlation was revealed between the height of the plants and the grain harvest from the plot. On average, over the three years 2020-2022, it was -0.54. At the same time, in 2022, when the stagnation time of grain sorghum increased to 40 days, the correlation also increased to -0.77. It can be assumed that the grain sorghum breeding, aimed at reducing the height of plants, will help to reduce crop losses when harvesting is delayed. And this, in turn, will increase grain collections per hectare without costs on the part of the producer.
Keywords:grain sorghum, correlation, breeding, weather, climate, Lower Volga region