Sorghum is a multipurpose crop cultivated in over 100 countries, but its productivity is constrained by several biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore, sorghum improvement programs largely focus on developing high-yielding cultivars with multiple traits including stress resistance, bioenergy, and nutritional quality. To enhance the use of diverse germplasm in sorghum improvement, a germplasm diversity representative subset called mini core collection was established in 2009 (Upadhyaya et al. 2009).

The availability of germplasm that is agronomically desirable and a source of resistance to multiple stresses is most desirable for use in breeding programs. The mini core collection was evaluated by many researchers and reported several trait-specific accessions for yield, quality, and stress tolerance traits. Later, considering the published records and agronomic performance of mini core accessions, a total of 28 multi-traits-specific germplasm accessions have been identified. This subset listed those 28 multiple trait-specific accessions. For details, please refer to Upadhyaya et al. 2019.

Trait-specific accessions represent accessions from Africa and Asia, and from different races/intermediate races, offering breeders the opportunity to choose diverse parents in different combinations of traits/regions/races for breeding improved cultivars for enhancing grain yield and quality, in addition to the improved adaptation of sorghum cultivars to environmental challenges. These accessions also can be utilized in genetic and genomic investigations to understand the mechanisms underlying multiple stress tolerance, and mapping genes.