A high yielding multicut fodder Sorghum CO 31

A high green fodder yielding and non seed shattering multicut fodder sorghum culture TNFS 0952 was developed at the Department of Forage Crops, Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore and released as Fodder sorghum CO 31 during 2014. It is a Gamma ray (400 Gy) mutant of multicut fodder sorghum variety CO (FS) 29. TNFS 0952 had registered exceedingly higher green fodder yield of 192 t/ha/yr against the check CO (FS) 29 (167 t/ha/yr). The per cent increase in green fodder yield over the check CO (FS) 29 was 14.9. In the station trials, it had registered a mean green fodder yield of 201 t/ha/yr as compared to check CO (FS) 29 (172.8 t/ha/yr) while the results obtained from on farm trials revealed that TNFS 0952 executed a mean green fodder yield of 183 t/ha/yr as against 161.2 t/ha/yr in CO (FS) 29. The per cent increase in green fodder yield over CO (FS) 29 was 16.3 and 13.5 respectively. The HCN content of TNFS 0952 was recorded to be 172 ppm after flowering as compared to CO (FS) 29 (185 ppm) which reduces the risk of HCN toxicity to the animals. TNFS 0952 recorded higher dry matter per cent (25.9) which contributed to higher dry matter yield (49.73 t/ha/yr). Reduced fibre content (19.80%) confers increased digestibility and palatability. The seeds after physiological maturity in TNFS 0952 were found to be intact as compared to CO (FS) 29. Its non shattering behavior of seeds facilitate enhanced seed yield to the tune of 19.1% than CO (FS) 29.