Year: 1976
Type: report
Abstract: Farmers on the hot, dry plains from Texas to South Dakota use grain sorghum like Com Belt farmers use com.Western Minnesota's summer climate has started to resemble that of the western plains.Does this mean that 1977 is the year for grain sorghum in Minnesota? Water RequirementsThe common opinion that sorghum has a lower water requirement than com is true but unimportant.Water Above: the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station has developed two grain sorghum hybrids-Minnesota 1 and the new RS 455 released regionally in 1976.Below: three types of sorghum for Minnesota: grain sorghum, sweet sorghum, and some sudangrass hybrids have naked seed like corn.The older sweet sorghum and sudangrass varieties pictured have seed with hulls or mixtures of seed with and without hulls. Agricultural Experiment StationUniversity of Minnesota requirement (pounds of water used per pound of dry matter produced) shows the crop's efficiency in using water when soil moisture is at an optimum level.Comparable water requirements for various crops are 304 for sorghum, 349 for com, 267 for proso millet, 583 for oats, 557 for wheat, 646 for soybeans, and 700 for field beans.The 304 pounds of water needed to produce a pound of sorghum costs nearly 2 cents through a Minneapolis water meter.Assuming that the plant is 45 percent grain, the water cost of 1 pound of grain is 4.3 cents plus the water lost by runoff and by evaporation from the soil surface.While such figures are interesting, water requirement and drought tolerance are unrelated.
Authors: R.G. Robinson, W. W. Nelson, J. H. Ford, D. D. Warnes
Language: English
Subfield: Agronomy and Crop Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W39343037