Lost Crops of Africa Volume I: Grains (1996) / Chapter Skim
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10 Sorghum: Specialty Types
10 Sorghum: Specialty Types
Pages 177-194
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From page 177... ...
In India, people ' Synonyms include Sorghum vulgare (for the entire species complex) and Sorghum caffroru~rl, Sorghum caudatum, Sorghum conspicuum, Sorghum arundinaceum, Sorghum dochna.
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From page 178... ...
Although it has long been a popular treat in the United States, only in the last 10 years since microwave ovens made it convenient for the home and office have modern breeding techniques been applied in force. Sales have since skyrocketed.
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From page 179... ...
This is not easy to do, however, and the seemingly endless task of pounding seeds with heavy poles causes untold hours of daily drudgery throughout most of rural Africa. Indeed, it is one of the fundamental barriers to the wider use of this crop (see Appendix B)
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From page 180... ...
This can reduce the cooking time required. These sorghums have waxy kernels (endosperms rather than hard vitreous ones.
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From page 181... ...
All in all, flavorful types like these present good opportunities for improving markets and increasing consumption, not to mention boosting the returns to farmers. QUALITY-PROTEIN SORGHUMS Deep in the misty green valleys of Ethiopia's highlands is hiding a unique sorghum that, in both nutrition and palatability, far surpasses the thousands of types found elsewhere.
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From page 182... ...
High-lysine sorghum with its inbuilt robustness and drought tolerance could well become a vital feedstuff for northern China; large, dry areas of the Soviet Union; much of the Middle East; the semiarid zones of India and Pakistan; substantial portions of Mexico; and other places that are dry, salty, and lacking in lysine-rich feeds. Moreover, the single gene responsible for the high lysine may be invaluable for boosting the quality of conventional sorghums.
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From page 183... ...
With Band Aid funding, David Harper, Omar Salih, and Abdelazim Nour visited 150 villages in the drought-devastated area checking on the people's welfare and gathering samples of the local crops especially those that had best survived the drought. A sorghum variety called "Karamaka" proved to be truly remarkable.
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From page 184... ...
has small, white, vitreous seeds, which are boiled like riced As of today, little or nothing is known about this interesting form of sorghum, but it could have a good future and deserves exploratory research. TRANSPLANT SORGHUMS In certain regions of semiarid West Africa, various special sorghums are transplanted like rice.
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From page 185... ...
Transplant sorghums therefore deserve international attention. The yields from transplant sorghums depend on the amount of moisture stored in the soil, but are relatively high by the standards of the very difficult sites where they are grown.
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From page 186... ...
Later-arriving grain types include some that were deliberately introduced by seedsmen and scientists towards the end of the 1 800s. By 1900, sorghum grain was well established in the southern Great Plains and in California; indeed, it had become an important resource in areas too hot and too droughty for maize (see page 160~.
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From page 188... ...
In some places, woody sorghum stems are the basic fuel for cooking. Leaves.
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From page 189... ...
Reuniting the genes of these Far Eastern types with those of Africa after a 2,000-year separation could be an extremely powerful genetic intervention leading to a whole new line of `'Chinaf,' hybrids. COLD-TOLERANT SORGHUM When CIMMYT first tried growing sorghum in the Valley of Mexico, the crop would not set seed.
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From page 190... ...
This response is being studied in the hope of finding an easily recognizable feature that can identify heat tolerance without torturing the seeds. If successful, this will open the way to mass screening so that farmers in the hottest areas will no longer face the heartbreak of seeing their fields wilting in the blazing sun before the plants have even grown more than knee-high.
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From page 191... ...
The other (previously known as Sorghum arundinaceumJ is a wild and weedy rainforest species that flourishes in Africa's wet tropics, where today's domesticated sorghums are poorly adapted. Although very little information is available, it appears to be more photosynthetically efficient at low light intensities than cultivated sorghum.'4 As of now it is not cultivated, but it may have a future as a domesticated crop for humid and forested regions.
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From page 192... ...
George and S Eapen of the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre in Bombay reported replicating certain cultivars of sorghum using tissue culture.
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From page 193... ...
Recently, crosses between sorghum itself and its sudangrass subspecies (Sorghum bicolor subspecies sudanense) have produced hybrid grasses with outstanding vigor.
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