Advances and challenges in sorghum breeding [ Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]: genomic tools, climate resilience and future directions

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is a major cereal crop cultivated in arid and semi-arid regions, where it plays a vital role in food security, livestock feed and industrial applications. Its inherent drought and heat tolerance, supported by its C4 photosynthetic pathway, efficient water use and extensive genetic diversity, make it one of the most climate-resilient cereal crops. However, climate change has intensified drought, heat, salinity and emerging pest and disease pressures, threatening sorghum productivity and yield stability worldwide. Conventional phenotypic breeding has contributed to sorghum improvement but remains constrained by the polygenic nature of adaptive traits, genotype × environment interactions and long breeding cycles. Recent advances in genomics, including whole-genome sequencing, pan-genomics, genome-wide association studies, marker-assisted selection, genomic selection, CRISPR/Cas genome editing, high-throughput phenotyping, speed breeding, artificial intelligence and multi-omics approaches, have revolutionized sorghum breeding by enabling more accurate and efficient selection for complex traits. This review synthesizes current genetic resources, genomic tools and climate-resilient breeding strategies while critically evaluating the strengths, limitations, practical applications and implementation challenges of major genomics-assisted breeding approaches, particularly in resource-limited breeding programs. It further highlights the integration of genomics, high-throughput phenotyping, artificial intelligence, environmental data, predictive breeding and participatory breeding to accelerate the development and adoption of climate-resilient sorghum cultivars. Future progress will depend on integrating multi-omics platforms, exploiting diverse germplasm, strengthening phenotyping and bioinformatics capacity, improving seed systems and translating genomic discoveries into practical breeding pipelines that benefit smallholder farmers.