Hardy sorghum varieties catch on amid adverse climate vagaries

Dar es Salaam. Against the backdrop of recurring adverse climatic and agronomic conditions, environmental stress-tolerant sorghum varieties appear to have caught farmers’ attention in the country.

This is according to a study released last week by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), indicating that the said varieties are proven to provide harvest even in bad years.

“Empirical findings showed that farmers had strong preferences for sorghum varieties that were tolerant to environmental stresses, high yielding, early maturing, fetching higher grain prices, and white in colour,” reads part of the report.

While sorghum is used mostly for food purposes, its demand has grown rapidly in Tanzania over the past few years as it is widely used to produce clear (lager) beer, non-alcoholic drinks, and bioenergy drink production.

The study used a choice experiment design to evaluate farmers’ preferences for traits of sorghum varieties in Tanzania.

The experiment involved six key sorghum attributes such as yield, maturity, grain price, colour, tolerance to environmental stresses (disease, pest, and drought) and cost of seed to evaluate farmers’ preferences.

The analysis relied on data collected between October-December 2019 from six regions – Dodoma, Singida, Shinyanga, Tabora, Songwe, and Mara. A multistage sampling design was employed to select sample households.

A total of 1,301 sorghum farmers were interviewed to understand their preferences and it was found that farmers strongly valued sorghum varieties that are high yielding and capable of fetching a high grain price, thereby enhancing their household income.

“On average, farmers were willing to more to move from a non-stress tolerant to a stress-tolerant seed variety. Farmers were willing to pay for tolerant varieties two times the amount they were willing to pay for an increase in grain yield of two tons/ha,” stated the study.

In fact, a tolerant variety was valued about six times the value respondents attached to a change from the longest maturity to the shortest maturity variety

The study further showed that a tolerant variety was also valued four times higher than both the value farmers were willing to pay for changing a sorghum variety from one fetching Sh250 kg to one fetching Sh550 per kg and from red/brown coloured grain to white.

Sorghum covers about 0.8 million hectares of land annually, with average productivity of about 1,000 kg/ha in Tanzania. More than 70 percent of the respondents favoured a tolerant seed variety, higher grain prices and a shorter maturity period.

Sorghum is well-adapted to arid and semi-arid environments with limited rainfall and high temperatures, where other cereal crops such as maize cannot grow.