Induced Mutagenesis for Enhancing Genetic Variability and Agronomic Performance in Sorghum Varieties for Burkina Faso

Abstract

Abstract Sorghum is one of the main cereals in terms of production and cultivated area in Burkina Faso. However, genetic variability in Sorghum varieties is low. The study aims to induce genetic variability in farmers’ preferred sorghum varieties and select the novel desired traits. Seeds of two Sorghum varieties (Grinkan and Sariaso14) were irradiated with gamma rays at 200, 300, 400 and 500 Gy doses. The mutant populations were developed using the single seed descend method. A 2-years field assessment was conducted to assess the genetic variability among 403 advance generation Sorghum mutants. A significant difference between the doses was observed for leaf number plant− 1 (NPL) (P ≤ 1%) and the plant height (PlHe) (P ≤ 5%) of Sariaso14 lines and only for the PlHe (P ≤ 1%) of Grinkan lines. All irradiation doses significantly increased the grain weight panicle− 1 of Sariaso14 lines while they affected those of Grinkan lines. The genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV), the phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV), the broad sense heritability (H2) and the genetic gain (GG) were high for grain weight panicle− 1 (GrWe). They were 90.82%, 92.84%, 0.95 and 183%, respectively for Sariaso14 lines and 80.85%, 89%, 0.82 and 151.3% respectively for Grinkan lines demonstrating that the observed variations for this trait was mainly due to genetic factors. The clustering of the mutants showed that the mutagenesis allowed the selection of dwarf, early maturity and high grain weight mutants. Thus, the induced mutation has improved the agronomic performances of sorghum varieties.