Genetic study of an Ethiopian sorghum BCNAM population

With a worldwide water crisis looming, a primary goal of sorghum breeding is to improve drought tolerance. To address this challenge in sorghum, we developed a backcross nested-association mapping (BCNAM) population using 13 diverse founder lines crossed with an Ethiopian elite cultivar Teshale. This sorghum BCNAM population was tested in three natural drought environments in Ethiopia and genetically characterized using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS). Both a joint-linkage (JL) model and genome-wide association study (GWAS) were used to dissect the genetic architectures of adaptation and yield traits.