Evaluation of Farmer-Grown Improved Sorghum Cultivars for Stover Quality Traits

摘要

Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is an important staple food crop in semi-arid tropical tracts of India where mixed crop and livestock farming systems are mostly prevalent. Sorghum not only provides grains for human consumption, but also providesfodder for livestock. For farmers, both grain and stover (crop residue) are of equal importance and they consider harvested stover as almost equal in market value to harvested grain. However, the feedingutritive value of sorghum crop residue is generally poor and it provides sub-maintenance levels of nutrients. The limited adoption of improved sorghum varieties has been mainly attributed to the lower nutritional value of their crop residue (Kelley and Rao 1994). The farmers feel that the stover yieldand stover quality of improved cultivars in terms of nutrition and digestibility is lower than that of the local cultivars. This study attempts to examine the validity of farmers' perceptions about stover yield and stover quality traits of improved cultivars vis-a-vis local cultivars. The study was conducted as one of the activities of the Department For International Development (DFID)-funded project on Exploring marketing opportunities through a research, industry and users coalition: sorghum poultryfeed aimed at enhancing the access to and availability of rainy-season sorghum for poultry feed rations.