Improving Sorghum

Through the new Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate-Resilient Sorghum, UGA and partner researchers will use new genomics tools to address urgent needs for a more drought-resilient food supply, increase rates of sorghum improvement to better meet long-term population growth, and investigate production systems that promote sustainable farming, particularly regarding preservation or restoration of soil resources and water quality. 

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“We have spent 20 years building genomic tools and developing a fundamental knowledge of sorghum,” said the project director, UGA Regents Professor Andrew Paterson. “This is an exciting opportunity to put all this research to work, improving human lives in some of the most impoverished parts of the world while also advancing progress toward a more bio-based economy through sustainable intensification of agricultural production.”

Paterson, a joint appointment between the Franklin College and the CAES, led the international effort to map the sorghum genome in 2009. This very important work is all the more critical as a response the changing conditions of our climate around the world. It is work on behalf of the future, being performed today in one of the few sectors (university research) where that kind of thinking prevails. More on Paterson and his research in this feature. 

Image: A field of hybrid sorghum, via Wikimedia Commons.