Location: Grain Quality and Structure Research
2020 Annual Report
Objectives
Objective 1: Integrate commercial grain sorghum quality traits with the timing and duration of heat and/or drought stress during grain fill.
• Sub-Objective 1.A. Determine how timing of drought stress during grain fill
impacts protein and starch chemistry and digestibility.
• Sub-Objective 1.B. Determine the degree to which heat stress impacts sorghum
grain quality traits.
Objective 2: Enable new rapid/high-throughput commercial methods to measure grain
sorghum composition and quality traits.
• Sub-Objective 2.A. Develop an in-vitro cellular antioxidant activity assay for
measuring the efficacy of sorghum bioactive compounds in response to radical
oxidative species.
• Sub-Objective 2.B. Determine the effectiveness of a blood glucometer in
determining fermentation efficiency using sorghum grain.
Objective 3: Integrate the stability/variability of grain sorghum compositional
quality and bionutrient components across multiple commercial production
environments.
• Sub-Objective 3.A. Evaluate the variability in sorghum grain composition related to protein and starch across multiple growing environments.
• Sub-Objective 3.B. Characterize phytonutrient composition in tannin and black
sorghum germplasm grown at multiple locations.
Objective 4: Molecular biological technologies will employ gene flow analysis to
identify sorghum compositional and quality traits variants migrating through
field/commercial sorghum breeding programs.
Approach
Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is an important drought tolerant crop in
regions of the Great Plains where water is limited and rainfall unpredictable.
Sorghum has been primarily used for animal feed in the U.S. but recently has seen
increasing use in the food and biofuel industries which has provided a new growth
area for sorghum utilization. That said, there has not been extensive research
conducted on grain quality factors related to sorghum. Recent advances have been
made regarding improving sorghum protein and starch digestibility at the genetic
level, yet little is known about how environmental factors impact sorghum grain
quality attributes and nutritional bioavailability. Sorghum is typically grown
under non-irrigated conditions and can face serious drought and heat stress during
grain fill. Drought and heat stress may become more prevalent in sorghum growing regions due to climate change and have the potential to severely impact sorghum
grain composition and end-use quality traits. Consistency is an important quality
attribute of cereal crops and further research is required to quantify the degree
to which sorghum grain quality is impacted by the environment. Our research will
support on-going efforts to improve sorghum grain quality at the genetic level by
providing grain quality information to breeding programs about the stability of
various traits. We will provide knowledge of how drought and heat stress impacts
sorghum grain quality, ultimately providing information necessary for the sorghum
breeding community to improve the end-use quality of sorghum.
Progress Report
This is a new project and all progress is reported on the expiring project 3020-43400-001-00D.
Accomplishments
