Stability in Advanced Gezira Population of Sorghum (Sorghum Bicolor (L.) Moench) at Drought Porne Environments in Sudan

In Sudan, grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench), is the most important cereal crop, in terms of total acreage, production and consumption. One hundred and twenty S1 families were taken at random from an advanced random mating Gezira sorghum population (G S P-1) developed and improved for six cycles using S1 family selection, at Rain-fed Crop Research Centre for Arid and Semi-Arid areas (RCRCASA) in the University of Gezira, Wad Medani Sudan. The study was conducted during two seasons (2004-2005) to study genetic variability in the population (GSP-1) at four rain-fed areas in Sudan namely; Gedarif University farm at northern Gedarif environment (2004), Gedarif Research Station at northern Gedarif environment (2005), Rahad Scheme rain-fed at marginal Gedarif environment (2004) and Kasamoor North east Gedarif (2005). The design used was a modified Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with two replications nested within six blocks. Stability was estimated for the 120 families yield (Kgh-1). The combined analysis over environments revealed significant differences between environments, which indicated that four environments are contrasting for evaluating the genotypes. In average over environments the genotypes have shown G×E interaction was not significant for yield, indicating relative ranking of the genotypes remained constant and yield was stable over all environments. The mean was1448Kgh-1. The Additive Main Effect and Multiplicative Interaction (AMMI) stability analysis with the first principal components (PCA1) axes for grain yield identified stable families as the families with a lower absolute PCA1 score which were 101, 95, 93, 96, 94, 103, 97, 102, 99, 100, 104, 98 respectively, would produce a lower absolute GE interaction effect and would have a less variable yield across the four Gedarf studied environments. These could provide a good source for sorghum improvement in Gedarif rain-fed area