PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE

Sorghum is an important cereal crop grown in arid and semi-arid regions for food and feed purposes. Considering its potential use as a carbohydrate source in animal feed, a breeding program was launched at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) to develop local grain sorghum varieties. The research aims to evaluate the performance of selected breeding lines in terms of growth and grain yield traits. The breeding lines include 12 sorghum pure lines, together with two advanced forage sorghum genotypes, Putra SB1 and Putra SB2, as controls. The experiment was conducted in a Randomised Complete Block Design at Field 10 UPM. Traits with high heritability and positive correlation to grain yield were the selection criteria. Results suggest that line V7 (5-3-6) recorded the highest grain yield (1785 kg/ha), while V10 produced the lowest yield (541 kg/ha), and was also the earliest to reach flowering (64 days). The longest height was achieved by V6 (2-36-3), at 294.4 cm, whereas V12 (Upms) recorded the least mean height (166.2 cm). There was moderate intra-population homogeneity observed for growth and yield characteristics, with coefficient of variation values ranging from 2.3% to 33.7%, because the population was still segregating. The results indicate that V7 demonstrated significant yield potential among the pure lines, highlighting their suitability for developing high-yielding grain sorghum cultivars from the existing population that are adapted to the local climatic conditions of Malaysia. However, further assessment is recommended to purify the evaluated population.