Improved nutritional quality of grain sorghum, a predominantly starchy staple crop, would offer benefits to human and animal health

In tandem, while sorghum is known for its drought tolerance, water availability remains a yield-limiting factor in many sorghum-growing regions which undergo deficit irrigation and/or drought, including the U.S. Sorghum belt and southern africa. For inbred diversity panels of high relevance to public breeding programs in these two regions – the latter through a plant breeding partnership – we will evaluate nutritional quality and productivity under optimal and managed pre-anthesis drought conditions, in three high-quality testing environments. We will examine the main and interaction effects of genotype, environment, and management on priority traits for quality (protein, FAT, starch, lysine, FE, and ZN) and productivity (grain number and yield), in a genomics-enabled crop growth modeling framework, into which we will write a (largely standalone) submodulefocused on grain macronutrient composition. We will conduct germplasm characterization (focused oncultivar-specific parameters) and prediction (focused onthe final 'emergent' traits of interest), and use the collected data and model outcomes to develop inbreds and hybrids with enhanced quality and/or productivity under optimal and/or water-limited conditions – including new female parents for the diversification of U.S. Breeding programs. We will use the modeling framework as an educational tool in plant breeding workshops. We will discuss results with growers, consumers, and students, as a demonstration case of simultaneous selection for productivity and quality and involved tradeoffs and synergies.