Sweet sorghum hybrids F1 in productivity can surpass the parental forms on 50-60%. Thus the breeding process is aimed to develop first generation hybrids with a strong potential of productivity and quality of green mass and silage. The purpose of the work is to study heritability and heterosis of the quantitative traits of sweet sorghum hybrids F1 obtained on a sterile basis. The study was conducted in 2013-2015 on the lines with cytoplasmic male sterility (‘A-63’, ‘Knyazhna’, ‘APV-1115), the varieties (‘Listvenit’, ‘Severnoe 44’, ‘Zernogradskoe 454’, ‘Stavropolskoe 36’, ‘Galiya’ and ‘Larets’) and the hybrids. The inheritance of green mass productivity and absolutely dry matter, the length of a vegetation period, plant height and leaf formation (foliage), protein content in dry matter of the hybrids occurred according to the type of dominance and overdominance. It has been determined that while choosing the parental forms for hybridization it’s essential to select the forms with differences in the vegetation period of 4-6 days to avoid the dominance of late maturity. The height pollinator increase results in the hybrid height increase and large heterosis. It’s necessary to select the parental forms with maximum foliage to improve leaf formation in the hybrids.

The problem to develop new early maturing grain sorghum varieties adapted to mechanized harvesting with high productivity and feed advantages, is of great urgency. The purpose of the current work was to study the inheritance of the main economically valuable traits in the first generation hybrids developed in the hybridization between samples of different ecological and geographical origin. In the first generation hybrids Zernogradskoe 88 × Seso 1 and Zernogradskoe 88 × Narosorg 1, there was identified the improvement of 1000-grain weight, number of grains per panicle, and length of a peduncle in comparison with the initial parental forms. In the hybrid combination obtained as a result of hybridization of the varieties Zernogradskoe 88 and Seso 3 there was not identified any positive manifestation of heterosis for the breeding process in the main studied traits. According to the trait ‘plant height’ in all combinations, there was identified overdominance of high-growing forms. According to the protein percentage in grains there was established depression or dominance of lower values of the trait. The inheritance of the trait ‘length of vegetation period’ in the studied hybrids corresponded to the partial dominance of both lower and higher values of the trait.

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