Association and Interrelationship Among Agronomic Traits and Fungal Diseases of Sorghum, Anthracnose and Grain Mold
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abstract
Anthracnose and grain mold are two of the most significant diseases of sorghum, a versatile crop that plays an important part in the daily lives of millions of inhabitants, especially in the drier tropical regions. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of four agronomic traits in selected sorghum germplasms on the two diseases using Spearmans test to identify significant pairwise correlations. Both anthracnose and grain mold scores were significantly and negatively correlated with seed weight and germination rate. The grain mold infection score also demonstrated negative correlations with plant height (Spearman = 0.61 and p-value = <0.0001) and panicle length (Spearman = 0.27 and p-value = 0.0022). In this investigation, principal component analysis and clustering variables analysis revealed that seed weight and germination rate exhibited a directional alignment, suggesting a positive association. Similarly, panicle length and plant height clustered together, suggesting a shared variation pattern. Additionally, a support vector machine and random forest models effectively predicted the germination rate based on the studied traits, highlighting the potential of machine learning in understanding complex trait relationships in sorghum. This work provides insights into the relationship between agronomic traits and disease resistance, thus contributing to sorghum improvement efforts.
