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Three Sorghum bicolor subspecies are recognized including cultivated types (i.e., elite lines, hybrids and landraces, all ssp. bicolor), a wild complex that is widely distributed and ecologically diverse (ssp. verticilliflorum), and weedy types from hybridizations between domesticated and wild sorghums (ssp. drummondii).
Within ssp. bicolor, landraces are often classified into one of five races (i.e., bicolor, caudatum, durra, guinea and kafir), as well as hybrids that combine characteristics of two or more races. Our collection includes representatives of the full range of landrace diversity, as well as a set of 230 “converted lines”, exotic landraces that have been crossed to a short, daylength-neutral line and repeatedly backcrossed to the exotic parent, thus retaining most of the agronomic properties of the landrace and allowing it to be used in breeding programs in temperate regions.
Our collection also includes a few other sorghum species that are used in comparative studies: S. propinquum, S. halepense, S. versicolor, S. purpurocereceum.
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