Forecasting and choice of the starting material in the selection of sugar sorghum based on clustering

In crop breeding, clustering of samples at a minimum of the Euclidean distance causes the combination of a set of features (morphological, biochemical, phenological, economic, and others) into clusters according to their objective similarity. Recently, breeders have widely used this method to evaluate the source material and form collections for purposeful breeding. The aim of the research was to cluster the working collection of sugar sorghum samples according to a set of characteristics, followed by the selection of the most valuable genotypes for targeted further breeding of hybrids with a high yield of sugars per unit area. In the presented work, 47 genotypes of sugar sorghum were used as research objects, which were grown in the experimental field of the Federal State Budgetary Research Institution Russian Research and Design-Technological Institute of Sorghum and Corn in the period from 2021 to 2023. The growing conditions of the crop can be characterized as arid: the hydrothermal coefficient varied from 0.62 to 0.75. The collection in question included genotypes with variability of the studied traits from 6.9 to 47.4 %. At the 42nd iteration step, the samples were grouped into 6 clusters, significantly differing in all characteristics, except for plant height. The first cluster consists of 8 varietes, the second – 28, the third – 4, the fourth – 4, the fifth – 1, the sixth – 2. The most promising were 34 samples from 2, 3 and 6 clusters, characterized by tallness (188.9-198.8 cm), productivity (seeds – 2.50-2.57 t/ha, aboveground biomass – 20.09-31.53 t/ha), high sugar content in the juice of the stem (16.4-17.0 %) and a powerful leaf apparatus (the area of the largest leaf is 207.9-312.8 cm², flag – 65.2-156.8 cm²). The involvement of selected samples in the breeding program will contribute to the creation of hybrids of the first generation of sorghum with a high yield of sugars per hectare of crops.

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