Several types of sorghum (grain sorghum, sweet grain sorghum, sweet stalk sorghum) with different potentialities
are grown and maintained by farmers in Burkina Faso. Despite their genetic proximity revealed by molecular
markers, the identification of distinctive agro-morphological traits between sweet grain sorghum and other
cultivated sorghums could contribute to better management of their genetic resources. Thus, 22-sweet grain
sorghum genotypes, 10-sweet stalk sorghum genotypes, and 10-grain sorghum genotypes were evaluated in a three
replicate Fisher incomplete block design using 19 quantitative traits. The results showed a high variability of traits
within each sorghum type and a greater closeness between sweet grain and sweet sorghum compared to grain
sorghum. In addition, eight traits clearly discriminated sweet grain sorghum from the other two cultivated sorghum
types. Sweet grain sorghum expressed the highest values of the sowing-heading cycle, leaf sheath length, stem
diameter, productive tillers, and panicle width and the lowest values of mean heading-flowering difference, and
100-grain weight. Moreover, the 'sorghum type' factor is less preponderant than the 'genotype factor' in expressing
the variability of all traits of the material studied. Therefore, the 42 genotypes are organized into three genetic
groups independently of the sorghum type factor, where the group I contains all sweet grain sorghum genotypes
and three sweet stalk sorghum genotypes. These results could be exploited in sorghum breeding programs for
crosses between sorghum types.

Brix Burkina Faso Genetic differentiation Morphoagronomical variability Sorghum