Morphological Diversity of Local Sorghum Cultivar (Sorghum bicolor) of East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Abstract

Sorghum has great potential to be developed in marginal lands of Indonesia including East Nusa Tenggara. However, the information about sorghum diversity in this area was very limited. This research aimed to describe morphological variation, and assessing the value of genetic diversity based on morphological characters of local sorghum cultivar of East Nusa Tenggara. The exploration and sample collection were conducted in 3 islands, i.e.: Timor, Sumba, and Flores. The observation of morphological characters was based on sorghum descriptor. Morphological character similarities were analyzed using Simple Matching (SM) coefficient, and a dendrogram was constructed using Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Average (UPGMA) method. The results showed that 36 accessions of sorghum in East Nusa Tenggara varied in 17 morphological characters. At the similarity coefficients of 48%, all sorghum accessions were separated into 2 groups based on the presence or absence of aleurone layer. Group I consisted of 12 accessions with no aleurone layer, while group II consisted of 24 accessions has aleurone layer. The genetic diversity of sorghum of East Nusa Tenggara is low (I=0.62-0.71 and h=0.37-0.42). The genetic diversity between populations (H T =0.4203) is higher than within populations (H S =0.3961). This study provides the first complete information about sorghum diversity in East Nusa Tenggara that will be useful as basic information for sorghum development in this area in the future.

Morphological Variability and Taxonomic Relationship of Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench Accessions Based on Qualitative Characters

“…The identification of four sorghum races revealed in this study clearly showed the predominance of Kafir race. This finding was different from sorghum diversity study from East Nusa Tenggara that were dominated by Bicolor race, with the occurrence of Guinea and Kafir races at a lesser number [16]. Different results were found from sorghum racial diversity studies in other countries, such as in sorghum accessions collected from Northwestern Benin which showed predominance of Guinea race without any representative of Kafir race [12].…”

“…Examination of qualitative characters for the assessment of morphological variability referred to Descriptors for Sorghum [19], including the determination of numerical scores for the analysis of taxonomic relationships. The use of qualitative characters in this study referred to previous studies on the analysis of morphological variations of sorghum landraces [11,15,16]. The numerical taxonomic methods used to reveal the grouping of sorghum accessions were cluster analysis and principal component analysis.…”

“…Based on preliminary field observations, sorghum in Java Island exhibit morphological variability, with three commons variants were recognized namely sorghum accessions with white, red, and brown grains. Publications on sorghum diversity in Indonesia were generally come from the eastern part of the country, particularly from East Nusa Tenggara [15,16]. A research on sorghum in Java was still very limited with the aim to observe the suitability of dry land in Gunungkidul [17].…”

Production of Sugar From Sweet Sorghum Stems with Hydrolysis Method Using Trichoderma viride

“…Sorghum seeds can be used to substitute wheat flour; fresh stems, and leaves as animal feed; while the root can be used as a bioherbicide and herbal medicine (Suminar et al, 2017). Most Indonesia regions, especially East Nusa Tenggara, are currently developing sorghum as a non-rice food as a support of food diversification program (Tnunay et al, 2019). Balai Pengkaji Teknologi Pertanian Bali (2019) utilizes sap from sorghum stems as a sweetener.…”