Wild relatives of crops play a key role in the development of high performing cultivars. Of the 22 species
comprising the highly variable genus, Sorghum, only one, S. bicolor, is commercially cultivated for food,
feed, and bioenergy production. Profitable utilization of wild species however, demands an interdisciplinary,
multi-pronged approach to increase the probability of achieving the desired genetic
improvement. In the past, plant breeders selected breeding material based on morphological
characteristics that were readily observable and co-inherited with the desired traits. However, a
combination of morphological and molecular analyses on large samples and smaller samples, respectively,
would maximize both information and usefulness. Molecular diversity data can potentially bridge
conservation and use when employed as a tool for mining germplasm collections for genomic regions
associated with adaptive or agronomically-important traits (i.e., genes that have been important in
adaptation to local environments or are associated with phenotypes selected by farmers or breeders. For
sorghum, which is constrained by over 40 diseases and 150 insect pests, host plant resistance offers an
effective, economical and environment friendly method of pest/pathogen control since it does not involve
any additional investments by the resource poor farmers..
