Identification of Ideal Locations and Stable High Biomass Sorghum Genotypes in semiarid Tropics

The dearth of proper delineation for energy sorghum cultivation has led to a prerequisite for evaluation and identification of test environments for the newly developed lines. This becomes of vital importance as the biomass yield is highly influenced by genotype and environmental (G × E) interactions. Several agronomic traits were considered to assess the biomass yield and the combined analysis of variance for G (genotype), L (location) and interaction effect of G × L. The variations in the yield caused by the interaction of G × L are very essential to acquire knowledge on the specific adaptation of a genotype. Thus, the multi-location trials conducted across locations and years have helped to identify the stable environments with specific adaptation for biomass sorghum. The presence of close association between the test locations suggested that the same information about the genotypes could be obtained from fewer test environments, and hence the potential to reduce evaluation costs. The two genotypes—IS 13762 and ICSV 25333—have shown stable performance for biomass traits across all the locations, in comparison with CSH 22SS (check). The top ten entries with stable and better performance for fresh biomass yield, dry biomass yield, grain yield and theoretical ethanol yield were ICSV 25333, IS 13762, CSH 22SS, IS 25302, IS 25301, IS 27246, IS 16529, DHBM2, ICSSH 28 and IS 17349