Selecting stable and high-yielding sorghum cultivars for the semi-arid tropics
A sorghum breeding program was reactivated in 1981 and selected cultivars, along with local checks, were evaluated in two experiments in the sorghum growing region of northern Cameroon. Experiment 1 was conducted in the Extreme North Province where annual rainfall ranges from 450 to 850 mm. Experiment 2 was conducted in the North Province where annual rainfall exceeds 850 mm. The objective of the study was to select a high yield and high stability sorghum cultivar for each region. The cultivar's responses were investigated using two analyses: the adaptability analysis and the stability analysis. The former used the method of superiority measure, defined by distance mean square between the test cultivar and the maximum (the highest yield in the location), and the latter used type 4 stability parameter, defined by the years within location mean square averaged over all locations. The conceptual separation of adaptability and stability facilitated the cultivars assessment. The results showed that in exp. 1, three cultivars S–35, CS–54 and CS–61 had similar adaptability and stability, while in the exp. 2, S–34 was best in terms of yield but was unstable due to susceptibility to grain mold. In contrast, the second best cultivar CS–63 was poorer in the high-yielding environments but was more stable than S–34. Key words: Sorghum, genotype-environment interaction, adaptability, stability parameters