PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED SORGHUM GENOTYPES IN A SALINE SODIC SOIL

Abstract

To study the effect of selection onsorghum (Sorghum bicolorMoench. cv. Inkath)grown in saline - sodic soil for tolerance, selected plants were grown under two plant densities. Field experiments were carried out at 2010 and 2011 on field of Dept. of Field Crops / College of Agriculture / University of Baghdad, in saline – sodic soil in three methods planting: rows in plot, the top of furrow and furrow bottom.Superior phenotypic plants were selected according to phenotype and higher yield for each planting method at 10% selection pressure. Selected genotypes and there were grown in a comparison experiment under two planting densities (53 and 89 thousand plant/ha). A randomized complete block design with three replications as factorial experiment was used. The results of comparison experiment, showed that the selected genotype of furrow bottom gave higher plant height, dry matter and crop growth rate (92.83cm, 4.84 t/ha and 3.47g/m2/day, respectively). It was concluded that selection in saline – sodic soil under planting methodsespecially of furrow bottom gave better chance to improve selected plants performance under this stress. The higher ratio of genetic variance to environmental variance was with no. of grain/head, head length and grain yield (13.07, 9.11 and 8.00, respectively). It can be conclud that selection on those traits will be effective to improve sorghum performance to saline - sodic soil.