The environmental stress such as, salinity (soil or water) are serious obstacles for field crops especially in the arid and semi-arid tracts of the world. In the Sudan, with the rapid expansion of irrigated agriculture, the question of soil salinity is becoming more and more urgent for naturally salt-affected lands under cultivation and maintaining the productivity of existing irrigated areas. It could be alleviated using irrigation and crop management. However, the former approach is very expensive. The latter is economical as well as efficient and it enables to produce salt tolerant crop varieties. Also other is a need to confirm the presence of genetically based variation for salt tolerance among different varieties of a particular crop at different plant growth stages. In order to investigate salinity stress on sorghum germination indices, an experiment was carried out in Sudan from September 2011 to October 2011 at University of Kordofan, in the Crop Sciences Department Laboratory, to create salinity stress, sodium chloride (Na Cl) at the levels of 0 (as control), 2, 4, 8 and 16 dS/m and three sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) cultivars (Arfagadamak, Wad Ahmed and Butana) were tested. Seed germination percentage, seedling root dry weight and seedling shoot dry weight were measured. Low level of salinity (2 dS/m) increased seed germination percentage, while the high levels (4, 8 and 16 dS/m) inhibited the seed germination significantly. The strongest inhibition of germination occurred at the higher salt concentrations. Growth of young seedlings was also reduced, especially at the higher salt concentrations. Wad Ahmed cultivar was found to be salt tolerant during seedling biomass production. Arfagadamak and Butana cultivars were found to be salt sensitive during seedling biomass production. The study revealed the presence of broad intra specific genetic variation in sorghum varieties for salt stress with respect to their early biomass production.

Rhizosphere bacteria are one of the most potential biological control agents in the plant disease protection. Bacillus species as a group offer several advantages over other bacteria for protection against pathogens because of their ability to form endospores, and because of the broad-spectrum activity of their antibiotics. Five soil samples from tomato rhizosphere were collected from shambat area, Khartoum State, Sudan. Bacillus isolates were isolated from the rhizosphere of tomato to use as natural bio-control agents. They were screened for antagonism in vitro against Alternaria alternata causal agents of early blight disease of tomato. Serial dilution technique was adopted for the isolation of Bacillus species. Only 27 out of 45 Bacillus isolates showed antagonistic properties. Four out of the 27 isolates showed antagonism (Bacillus B25, B35, B41, B45) were identified to the species level by bacteriological assay (morphological and biochemical tests).

A two-year study was conducted on Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.Moench) across two environments in North Kordofan State, Sudan, to examine eight grain sorghum genotypes (Qusari, Wad-mergani, Sefera Red-Zinnari, Fraikh, Hamadi, Nilla and Kelash). The Quasari and Kelash genotypes are early flowering and early maturing. The genotype Quasari ,Fraikh and Nilla were superior in yield and yield's performance across all environmental conditions. Positive and significant phenotypic and genotypic correlations were found. Grain yield per hectare had high significant positive correlation with number of grain per panicle and number of panicles per unit area. The variance components for the two environments showed that most of the characters had higher phenotypic and genotypic variance estimates than the environmental variance estimates.

Set of sixteen guar genotypes was evaluated under rain-fed conditions at Kazgeil, Northren Kordofan State, Sudan in 1998/99 season, using a four x four triple partially balanced lattice design. Data recorded at were used for partitioning the genotypic correlations between seed yield and five of its components into direct and indirect effects. Moreover, different selection indices were constructed using different combinations of these characters. The path analysis showed that number of pods/plant had the highest positive direct effect (2.653) on seed yield/plant followed by number of seeds per pod. On the other hand number of fruiting nodes/main stem exerted the highest negative direct effect (-1.383) on seed yield/plant. The selection index involving single trait viz.1000 seed weight gave the minimum expected genetic advance (0.6) and relative efficiency (83.33%). However, the index involving all the six traits exhibited the highest expected genetic advance (2.03) and the maximum relative efficiency (281.94%).The two trait selection index of number of pods/plant and 1000-seed weight scored the relative efficiency of 138.89% which is equal to the relative efficiency of the individual trait index of number of reproductive branches/plant.

A field experiment was conducted for two consecutive seasons to assess the impact of four plant spacing (10, 20, 30 and 40 cm) and three weeding levels (no weeding, weeding once (at two weeks from sowing) and weeding twice (at two weeks and at four weeks) on growth and yield of peanut (groundnut) in rain-fed under Kordofan (Sudan) conditions. A randomized complete block design in four replications was used. The results showed that plant spacing of 10 cm gave 40% more yield than that at 40 cm and was the best for maximizing yield under rain-fed conditions. The growth and yield attributes of groundnut were significantly reduced when the crop was left un weeded. Weeding twice had the highest number of pods per plant, 100-Kernel weight, pods yield per plant and final pod yield (t/h). Weeds reduced pod yield by about 40%. The field was dominated by Cenchrus biflours L.