Conventional breeding sorghum for soil salinity-stress tolerance

The increased demand for sorghum (one of the important food/fodder/feed crops in the semi-arid tropics) driven by enhanced demand for milk and milk products imposes extension of sorghum cultivation in saline soils, which severely limits crop productivity. The development and adoption of cultivars tolerant to salinity is the cost-effective approach to enhance sorghum productivity in saline soils. However, attempts to breed sorghum for salinity tolerance are limited owing to the complexity in screening for and inheritance of salinity tolerance. In this article we have reviewed and discussed the screening methods and selection criteria used to breed sorghum for salinity tolerance