Introgressing Striga Resistance from a Mapped Donor Source into a Rwandan Adapted Sorghum Variety

Abstract

Sorghum is the world’s fifth most important cereal, in terms of both production and area planted. Striga hermonthica is one of the major constraints of sorghum production globally and particularly so in Eastern Africa. This study aimed at transferring five Striga resistances Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) located on linkage groups SBI-01, SBI-02, SBI-05 and SBI-06 from a genetically mapped donor source line N13 into a locally adapted farmer preferred variety, IS8193 using Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs). Nine polymorphic SSR markers were used to identify F1 generations and the subsequent BC1F1 progenies carrying Striga resistance QTL. Sixteen F1 progenies and twelve BC1F1 were found to have incorporated one to three Striga resistances QTL. The twelve BC1F1 lines with Striga resistance QTL were subsequently backcrossed to IS8193 to produce BC2F1 generation for further fore-ground and back-ground selection in the future. This work was conducted during March 2010 to August 2011 at University of Nairobi and at Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-Nairobi Kenya. Keywords - Molecular markers, Quantitative Trait Loci, Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) Markers, Striga hermonthica