Folk Classification of Sorghum (Sorghum Bicolor (L.) Moench) Land Races and its Ethnobotanical Implication: A Case Study in Northeastern Ethiopia

Resumo

Ethiopia is one of the centers of origin and diversity for a number of crop species, among which sorghum has a wide range of distribution in the country. Farmers' knowledge about sorghum crop such as types, names, uses, cropping
systems, cultivation methods, and so on has been handed down inter-generationally, primarily through oral tradition.
During the 1998 and 1999 cropping seasons, sorghum landrace collection was conducted in Ethiopia to document farmers' indigenous knowledge, take conservation measures, and incorporate potential landraces into future breeding
programs. The collection strategy was non-random accession collection, incorporating farmers and their rich indigenous knowledge and experience into the collection team. The wealth of genetic diversity in the explored area
consisted of drought-tolerant, striga-tolerant, and bird-resistant species. Farmers refer to discrete sorghum types by different names, which vary for several characters. For instance, the name wotet-begunche designates a matured sorghum seed with milky taste; ahyo and wof-aybelash mean bird-resistant, in the case where not a single grain was damaged by birds. Farmers' indigenous knowledge also designates striga-tolerant landraces such as mera, mognayfere, minchiro, and ckerekit. Pot and field experiments were conducted later to corroborate the indigenous knowledge of bird-resistant and striga-tolerant sorghum landraces. We recommend that the pest-tolerant landraces
confirmed by these experiments be incorporated into breeding programs.