sorghum

1. An Old World grass (Sorghum bicolor), several varieties of which are widely cultivated as grain and forage or as a source of syrup.
2. Syrup made from the juice of this plant.

[New Latin Sorghum, genus name, from Italian sorgo, a tall cereal grass, probably from Medieval Latin surgum, perhaps variant of Vulgar Latin *syricum, from neuter of Latin Syricus, Syrian, from Syria, Syria.]

For more information on sorghum, visit Britannica.com.

Sorghum includes many widely cultivated grasses having a variety of names in various countries. Cultivated sorghums in the United States are classified as a single species, Sorghum bicolor, although there are many varieties and hybrids. The two major types of sorghum are the grain, or nonsaccharine, type, cultivated for grain production and to a lesser extent for forage, and the sweet, or saccharine, type, used for forage production and for making syrup and sugar.

Grain sorghum is grown in the United States chiefly in the Southwest and the Great Plains. It is a warm-season crop which withstands heat and moisture stress better than most other crops, but extremely high temperatures and extended drought may reduce yields. It is extensively grown in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado, and South Dakota. This grain production is fed to cattle, poultry, swine, and sheep primarily. Sorghum is considered nearly equal to corn in feed value.

Sorghums originated in the northeastern quadrant of Africa. Until recent years, practically all grain sorghums of importance introduced into the United States were tall, late maturing, and generally unadapted. Since its introduction into the United States in colonial times, the crop has been altered in many ways, these changes coming as a result of naturally occurring genetic mutations combined with hybridization and selection work of plant breeders. The fact that hybrid grain sorghums with high yield potential could be produced with stems that are short enough for harvesting mechanically made the crop appealing to many farmers. See also Breeding (plant).

Grain sorghum is difficult to distinguish from corn in its early growth stages, but at later stages it becomes strikingly different. Sorghum plants may tiller (put out new shoots), producing several head-bearing culms from the basal nodes. Secondary culms may also develop from nodal buds along the main stem. The inflorescence (head) varies from a dense to a lax panicle, and the spikelets produce perfect flowers that are subject to both self- and cross-fertilization. Mature grain in different varieties varies in size and color from white to cream, red, and brown. Grain sorghum seeds are small and should not be planted too deep since sorghum lacks the soil-penetrating ability of corn. The seeds are planted either in rows wide enough for tractor cultivation or in narrower rows if cultivation is not intended.

Commonly known as sorgo, sweet sorghum was introduced into North America from China in 1850, although its ancestry traces back to Egypt. It is an annual, rather drought-resistant crop. The culms are from 2 to 15 ft (0.6 to 4.6 m) tall, and the hard cortical layer, or shell, encloses a sweet, juicy pith that is interspersed with vascular bundles. At each node both a leaf and a lateral bud alternate on opposite sides; the internodes are alternately grooved on one side. Leaves are smooth with glossy or waxy surfaces and have margins with small, sharp, curved teeth. The leaves fold and roll up during drought. The inflorescence is a panicle of varying size having many primary branches with paired ellipsoidal spikelets containing two florets in each fertile sessile spikelet. The plant is self-pollinated. Seed is planted in cultivated rows and fertilized similarly to corn. The main sorghum-syrup-producing area is in the south-central and southeastern United States. See also Cortex (plant); Pith.

Sorghum vulgare, S. bicolor; cereals that thrive in semi-arid regions and provide important human food in tropical Africa, central and north India, and China. Sorghum produced in the USA and Australia is used for animal feed. Also known as kaffir corn (in South Africa), guinea corn (in west Africa), jowar (in India), Indian millet, and millo maize. The white-grain variety is eaten as meal; the red-grained has a bitter taste and is used for beer; sugar syrup is obtained from the crushed stems of the sweet sorghum. A 200-g portion is a rich source of protein, vitamin B₁, niacin, and iron; a good source of zinc; a source of vitamin B₂; provides 14 g of dietary fibre; supplies 660 kcal (2800 kJ). See also millet.

[SOR-guhm] This cereal grass has broad, cornlike leaves and huge clusters of cereal grain at the end of tall, pithy stalks. Sorghum is a powerhouse of nutrition but, though it's the third leading cereal crop in the United States, almost all of it is used for animal fodder. Around the world, however, it's the third largest food grain. A few U.S. Mills do sell it by mail order. One sorghum by-product the United States does use for human consumption is the sweet juice extracted from the stalks, which, like that from the sugarcane, is boiled down to produce a thick syrup called sorghum molasses (also sorghum syrup or simply sorghum). It's often used as a table syrup and to sweeten and flavor baked goods.

In the 1840s the United States imported sorghum seeds from Liberia and grew the plants with a view to manufacturing sugar commercially from their juice. All such attempts proved futile, however, since glucose is the only saccharine matter in the plant. Colonel Isaac Hedges of Missouri was the greatest promoter of the product. During the Civil War, when Southern molasses was unavailable in the North, sorghum became a popular product in the Upper Mississippi Valley. Farmers used large wooden knives to strip sorghum stalks of their leaves as the plants stood in the field. They then cut the stalks and hauled them to a local mill where they were run between rollers to extract the juice, which was boiled to the proper consistency in large vats. Great quantities of this "long sweetening" were made and used as a substitute for sugar on the prairie frontier.

Bibliography

Ledbetter, William M. "Isaac Hedges' Vision of a Sorghum-Sugar Industry in Missouri," Missouri Historical Review 21, no. 3 (1926): 361–369.

Grass genus in the plant family Poaceae; can cause cyanide and nitrate–nitrite poisoning; the cyanide poisoning may be in the peracute, lethal, anoxia form or a chronic form manifested by spinal cord degeneration, ataxia, urinary incontinence and consequential pyelonephritis, or as congenital deformities including arthrogryposis. Includes Sorghum almum, S. bicolor (S. vulgare, grain sorghum), S. halepense (Johnson grass), S. sudanense, S. verticilliflorum. Includes very valuable fodder crops used extensively as ensilage or green chop, and a grain sorghum used for lot feeding. Fodder sorghum is the more dangerous but both should be considered as potentially poisonous.

Sorghum
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Monocots
(unranked):	Commelinids
Order:	Poales
Family:	Poaceae
Genus:	Sorghum L.
Species
About 30 species, see text

Sorghum is a genus of numerous species of grasses, some of which are raised for grain and many of which are used as fodder plants either cultivated or as part of pasture. The plants are cultivated in warmer climates worldwide. Species are native to tropical and subtropical regions of all continents in addition to the South West Pacific and Australasia. Sorghum is in the subfamily Panicoideae and the tribe Andropogoneae (the tribe of big bluestem and sugar cane).

For more specific details on commercially exploited Sorghum see commercial sorghum.

Contents 1 Cultivation and uses 2 Species 3 Hybrids 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Cultivation and uses

Sorghum output in 2005.

Numerous Sorghum species are used for food (as grain and in sorghum syrup or "sorghum molasses"), fodder, the production of alcoholic beverages, as well as biofuels. Most species are drought tolerant and heat tolerant and are especially important in arid regions. They form an important component of pastures in many tropical regions. Sorghum species are an important food crop in Africa, Central America, and South Asia and is the "fifth most important cereal crop grown in the world"^[1].

A Sorghum species, Johnson Grass, is classified as an invasive species in the US by the Department of Agriculture.^[2]

The reclaimed stalks of the sorghum plant are used to make a decorative millwork material marketed as Kirei board.

Sweet sorghum syrup is known as molasses in some parts of the U.S., although it is not true molasses.

Some species of sorghum can contain levels of hydrogen cyanide, hordenine and nitrates lethal to grazing animals in the early stages of the plant's growth. Stressed plants, even at later stages of growth, can also contain toxic levels of cyanide^{[citation needed]}.

In China, sorghum is fermented and distilled to produce maotai, which is regarded as one of the country's most famous liquors. Sorghum was ground and the flour was a main alternative of wheat in north China for a long time.

In India, and other places, sweet sorghum stalks are used for producing bio-fuel by squeezing the juice and then fermenting into ethanol^[3]. Texas A&M University in the United States is currently running trials to find the best varieties for ethanol production from sorghum leaves and stalks in the USA^[4].

Species

• Sorghum almum
• Sorghum amplum
• Sorghum angustum
• Sorghum arundinaceum
• Sorghum bicolor (primary cultivated species)
  • Sorghum bicolor subsp. drummondii — Sudan grass
• Sorghum brachypodum
• Sorghum bulbosum
• Sorghum burmahicum
• Sorghum controversum
• Sorghum drummondii
• Sorghum ecarinatum
• Sorghum exstans
• Sorghum grande
• Sorghum halepense
• Sorghum interjectum
• Sorghum intrans
• Sorghum laxiflorum
• Sorghum leiocladum
• Sorghum macrospermum
• Sorghum matarankense
• Sorghum miliaceum
• Sorghum nigrum
• Sorghum nitidum
• Sorghum plumosum
• Sorghum propinquum
• Sorghum purpureosericeum
• Sorghum stipoideum
• Sorghum timorense
• Sorghum trichocladum
• Sorghum versicolor
• Sorghum virgatum

Hybrids

• Sorghum × almum
• Sorghum × drummondii

See also

• Baijiu

References

1. ^ Sorghum, U.S. Grains Council.
2. ^ Johnson Grass, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Accessed 2257 UDT, 12 March, 2009.
3. ^ Sweet Sorghum : A New "Smart Biofuel Crop" AgriBusinessWeek, 30 June 2008
4. ^ Ceres and Texas A&M to Develop and Market High-Biomass Sorghum for Biofuels Texas A&M University System Agriculture Program, 1 October 2007

• Watson, Andrew M. Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 052124711X.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sorghum

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Sorghum

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Sorghum.

• Crop Wild Relatives Gap Analysis Portal reliable information source on where and what to conserve ex-situ, regarding Sorghum genepool
• FAO Report (1995) "Sorghum and millets in human nutrition"
• FAO "Compendium on post-harvest operations"—Contains discussion on origin, processing and uses of sorghum
• Alternative Field Crops
• ITIS 42106 2002-09-22
• ICRISAT
• Grain Sorghum Irrigation
• Sorghum on US Grains Council Web Site
• National Grain Sorghum Producers
• National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association
• [1]
• Sorghum Growth Stages
• Sequencing of the Sorghum Genome by Methylation Filtration
• Risk management of cyanide (prussic acid) and nitrates in sorghum crops
• Preliminary assembly and annotation of sorghum bicolor genome
• ChloroFill brand building panels made from sorghum stalks.
• Lost Crops of Africa: Sorghum
• Sorghum: A Biofuel Alternative

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