CONTRIBUTION OF AGRONOMIC TRAITS FOR SUGAR YELD IN SWEET SORGHUM GENOTYPES
Currently, sweet sorghum has presented great expansion of cultivation in traditional areas and new technologies sugar and alcohol sector. The aim was to to identify what agronomic traits can be used for indirect selection of genotypes with higher sugar yield. The work was conducted in the harvest 2014/2015, at Embrapa Agropecuária Oeste, in Dourados, MS. It were evaluated 25 genotypes in experimental design was a randomized block design with three replications. We evaluated the following agronomic traits: plant height, fresh mass, percentage of stem, leaves and panicles, dry mass, Brix, yield of juice and sugar. The F-test was used to check for genetic variability among genotypes. Phenotypic correlations among these traits were estimated, which are deployed through the path analysis, in direct and indirect effects, considering the yield sugar as the primary dependent variable. We observed that 92% of the variation in sugar yield was explained by the explanatory variables, value higher than in other studies and appropriate to explore the gains with indirect selection in sweet sorghum. The indirect selection based on Brix trait is the most effective way to obtain genetic progress in the sugar yield in sorghum genotypes.