Morphological and biochemical traits attribution for fodder yield and quality in forage sorghum using principal component analysis

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is a climate resilient crop with various benefits for farmers, consumers and the environment. Its major uses are food, feed and fodder. In North India it is specially grown for fodder purpose. A field experiment was conducted during kharif 2021 at Forage Section Research Farm, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar to evaluate twenty-one single cut forage sorghum genotypes including five hybrids. Green fodder yield had strong positive correlation with dry fodder yield 0.994** (p = 0.01). Principal components analysis revealed that the first five components PC1, PC 2, PC 3, PC 4 and PC 5 with eigen values more than one contributed 77.5% of the total variability among sorghum genotypes based on thirteen different quantitative traits. First component (PC1) contributed in a positive direction for green and dry fodder yield. From above study it was concluded that cultivation of improved forage sorghum cultivars like CSV38F, HJ541, SPV 2881, CSV44F, CSH40F, etc. will certainly help to bridge the gap between demand and supply of green and dry fodder in India.