There is a wide range of variation in sorghum residing in Ethiopia across different
regions. In subsistence farming like Ethiopia, obtaining high yield by itself may not be
as important as achieving reasonable and stable one. High and stable performance
of crop under wider environmental conditions is desirable attributes of cultivars.
However this is practically difficult to achieve specially in areas like Ethiopia where
environmental variations are very high and unpredictable and significant genotype by
environment interaction occurs. Therefore, studying the adaptability of genotypes
across the different gradient of environment would help to determine an optimum
breeding strategy of either to breed for specific or wider adaptation which is
dependant on the expression of stability under a limited or wider range. Therfore, this
research was proposed in order to answer the follwing questions: 1) In which way are
ecotypes of sorghum better adapted to certain environmental conditions? 2) Which
traits are important in regard to performance under a wide range of possible farming
systems under varaible climatic conditions? 3) What role plays the population
structure of sorghum in regard to adaptation to different environmental conditions and
4) Which genes are involved in adaptation to diverse environmental conditions. About
100 genotypes collected from the different part of the country (representing the high,
mid and low altitude) will be acquired from the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation
(IBC) and research centers. Field evaluations for performance will be done at four
locations representing the the highland, humid-mid, dry-mid and low lands in order to
find stable genotypes scross the locations. For this appropriate statistical packeges
will be employed. Once the stable genotypes are identified work will focus on the
gene expression using molecular markers and real-time PCR so that adaptation
profile can be established.