Date of Award
August 2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Division of Agriculture (SAFES)
Committee Member
Stephen Kresovich
Committee Member
Susan Duckett
Committee Member
Richard Boyles
Committee Member
William Bridges
Abstract
Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is a climate resilient grain cereal crop originating from Africa that has traditionally been used to make a variety of fermented beverages such as pito and baijiu. In western markets, the use of sorghum to produce beers and beverages has recently risen in part due to the visibility of a gluten sensitive/intolerant market and a growing interest in unique inputs for beverage production. As such, there is a developing body of research on sorghum as a malted input into beverages. A major limitation to the wider adoption of sorghum as a substrate in mashing is its low activity of amylolytic enzymes, either the result of insufficient content or inhibition by endogenous compounds. A collection of 42 diverse accessions representing the grain sorghum diversity panel, was evaluated for associations between alpha and beta amylase content, race, origin, and seed color as well as two classes of amylase inhibitors, phenols and tannins. Among these accessions are several commonly used genetic resources, including reference line BTx623 and parents from the sorghum grain nested association panel. Notable findings include accessions with high alpha amylase content, sources that may harbor additional high-amylase sorghums, associations with grain color, and populations which may be used to genetically map loci associated with the amylase activity. These directions include the use of the sorghum bioenergy nested association panel to genetically map the trait and in-vivo methods to evaluate putative casual genetic loci.
Recommended Citation
Disharoon, Andrew, "Enzymatic Targets for Improvement of Malting Sorghum" (2020). All Theses. 3376.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/3376