The inheritance of base temperature in grain sorghum

Abstract

Two different methods were used to identify the genetic determinants of the base temperatures of sorghum seeds which were germinated at 15°C. These were a factorial mating design and a crossing system to identify lines which contain the greatest number of loci with favourable alleles. The results indicated a dominant cytoplasmic effect on the base temperature which was also affected by incompletely dominant nuclear genes. The implications of the results for sorghum breeding are discussed.