Haryana Agricultural University develops high protein, sweeter sorghum variety

Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University (CCSHAU), Hisar, has developed an improved variety of sorghum HC713 for cultivation in the southern part of the country. The variety has been developed by the forage section, department of genetics and plant breeding of HAU.
 

This variety of sorghum is suitable for high biomass and quality fodder in the southern states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. HAU vice-chancellor Professor K P Singh said green fodder yield of HC 713 was 7.5% higher than the popular variety CSV 21F. “Dairy farmers will also get more economic benefit from the increase in milk production due to higher protein content and digestibility. Another speciality of this variety is its sweetness, which is more than 10%, due to which cattle will relish it more,” he added.
 

Prof Singh said it was a sweet and juicy variety capable of growing in saline areas. “It performs better under recommended fertilization and irrigation management. Apart from this, it is resistant to logging. This variety does not fall even when there is excess rain and wind. Dhurin, a naturally occurring anti-nutritional constituent found in sorghum, is very low in this variety (80 ppm on fresh weight basis). Apart from this, protein content is 7.5% and digestibility is 52.2%, which will increase the productivity of milch animals. The HC 713 variety is resistant to the stemborer insect and other foliar diseases. It is an excellent variety in terms of fodder production, nutritional value and disease resistance,” he said.
 

The HC 713 variety is developed by the scientists of forage section namely Pummy Kumari, Satyavan Arya, S K Pahuja, N K Thakral and D S Phogat in collaboration with Satpal, Jayanti Tokas, Harish Kumar, Vinod Malik and Sarita Devi.