In spite of several strategies implemented to improve sorghum production in Ghana, average grain yield in farmers' fields remains low and far below the estimated potential. The development of effective strategies requires continuous, in-depth understanding of production constraints as well as farmer preferences for crop traits. To this end, a participatory rural appraisal using focus group discussions, interviews with semi-structured questionnaires and preference ranking was carried out among 122 smallholder sorghum farmers in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Majority (91%) of respondents were engaged in farming with more than half of their farm sizes allocated to sorghum cultivation. Drought, high cost of farm inputs and declining soil fertility were the top three constraints. Almost 42% of farmers described their soils as low in fertility. The most preferred traits by farmers were drought tolerance, high grain yield, earliness, grain quality as well as low fertilizer requirement. A better understanding of the perceptions of farmers and factors that limit the adoption of improved technology is important to guide policy towards the design of effective crop improvement and extension programmes. The study highlights the importance of breeding sorghum varieties with traits preferred by smallholder farmers that will lead to increased adoption of improved technology.

An efficient callus-mediated regeneration system was developed for high-frequency production of planting material of sugarcane genotypes LSC and B36464. Spindle leaf segments cultured on MS basal medium supplemented with 2,4-D or picloram at 1, 2, 3 or 4 mg/L resulted in callus induction. Callus induction was higher on 2,4-D amended medium compared to picloram. Nevertheless, for both auxins, callus induction improved significantly (p ≤ 0.05) with increasing concentration; the highest (82 and 82.5% for B36464 and LSC respectively) was achieved at 4 mg/L. For shoot induction, calli were transferred to MS medium supplemented with BAP (0.1, 0.5, 1.0 or 1.5 mg/L). The highest number of shoots (18.13 and 16.75 for B36464 and LSC respectively) was achieved at 1.5 mg/L. Serial subculture at four-week intervals on a higher concentration of BAP (2.5 mg/L), in combination with NAA (0.5 mg/L) and GA 3 (0.5 mg/L), resulted in a four-fold increase in shoot number within 16 weeks. On this medium, 40% of shoot clusters of B36464 formed well-defined shoots. On MS medium containing solely NAA (3 mg/L), 88 and 72% (B36464 and LSC respectively) formed roots. Post-flask acclimatisation of the plantlets led to 85 and 91% survival rates in LSC and B36464 respectively after which plantlets were successfully transferred to field conditions. The callus-mediated regeneration system reported in this study has the potential to sustainably provide sugarcane planting material for the emerging sugar industry in Ghana.