Sorghum has innate tolerance for drought, yet when it encounters terminal drought stress owing to reduction in soil moisture, at time of booting, causes reduction in yield and associated traits. The current study was conducted to evaluate two populations (recombinant inbred line and a reference set population) in treatment plots by inducing stress at booting stage and withholding irrigation against control plots. The following traits were studies in the current experiment: Days to fifty percent flowering, Plant height, Fresh weight, Dry weight, Panicle weight, Grain weight, Test weight, Harvest index, Panicle harvest index and Vegetative growth index. The treatments (control and stress) have shown significant variation for all traits under study for genotype by environment variation. The traits variation for across treatments showed high variation for flowering, panicle, grain and test weight between control and stress while other traits had limited variation. Nevertheless, there was no negative correlation observed for these traits indicating concurrent improvement of these traits for crop improvement. Further, quantitative traits analysis and association study in parallel will give more comprehensive output.

Keywords: sorghum , drought, terminal stress, reference set, RIL population