INHERITANCE OF BASIC QUANTITATIVE TRAITS BY THE HYBRIDS OF GRAIN SORGHUM OF THE FIRST GENERATION

In the work with all crops including sorghum, it’s necessary to know the character of the inheritance of basic economic traits so that to decrease the time for breeding of new varieties and hybrids. While studying the hybrids of the first generation the specialist can precisely reveal a recessive or a dominant effect of the gene, which controls this or that trait. The article gives the results of study of the inheritance of plant height, length of peduncle and mass of 1000 seeds characteristic to the hybrids of grain sorghum of the first generation. ‘Plant height’ is an important trait in grain sorghum breeding which largely determines resistance of a variety or a hybrid to lodging and suitability to machine harvesting. Analyzing 21 hybrids of the first generation on the trait ‘plant height’ 80,9% of them revealed presumptive heterosis and 66,7% showed authentic heterosis. The hybrids with authentic heterosis possessed overdominance (hp>1,0) of the trait. ‘Length of peduncle’ is of great importance for grain sorghum breeding and determines its suitability for machine harvesting. The most hybrids (14) revealed their overdominance according to the trait ‘extension of a panicle’. ‘Mass of 1000 seeds’ is one of the basic elements of grain sorghum productivity, which determines grain size and maturity. The studied hybrids of the first generation showed different types of the trait inheritance, such as a depression, a partial and a full dominance of both a little and a large value of the trait, and an overdominance as well.