MuciSorghum

Unrevealing the Potential Role of Sudanese Sorghum Wild Relatives: The Untapped Treasure-trove for Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Securing Food

01/04/2025 to 31/03/2027

The ovararching aim of MuciSorghum is the improvement of agricultural sustainability and agri-food system by reducing the excessive use of chemical fertilizers that are manufactured through the Haber-Borsch process, an energy- and fossil-fuel-intensive process. This goal should be achieved through harnessing biological nitrogen fixation in sorghum. Therefore, we will
1) quantify the mucilage amounts and characteristics among the selected Sudanese wild sorghum accessions;
2) isolate and characterize the community and structural diversity of mucilage-supported diazotrophic microbiota from aerial roots using amplicon sequencing, qPCR and metagenome sequencing techniques
3) measure the biological nitrogen-fixing capacity across wild sorghum accessions acetylene reduction assays (ARAs), 15N natural abundance, 15N dilution, 15N gas enrichment, and nitrogen balance experiments
4) prepare for the introduction of aerial root mucilage traits into elite sorghum cultivars for improving agricultural sustainability and food safety.
This next step in sorghum improvement will have a significant impact on sorghum crop productivity and nitrogen use efficiency, particularly in regions of the world where agriculture is characterized by inheritance and poor soil fertility.