The development of high yielding and stable varieties for the drought prone area requires a continuous supply of new germplasm as a source of desirable genes. However, in Ethiopia the extent of genetic diversity among sorghum germplasms has not been systematically quantified. A total of 275 sorghum accessions collected from the major drought prone areas of Ethiopia were evaluated for genetic diversity at two representative moisture stressed areas. The genetic diversity between test accessions were estimated based on six major qualitative morphological traits using Shannon-Weaver diversity index (Hï‚¢). All the qualitative characters showed high genetic diversity among the test accessions and between regions of origins. The overall average phenotypic diversity (Hï‚¢) among accessions was 0.82, varying from 0.66 for inflorescence exertion to 0.93 for grain color. Partitioning of the phenotypic diversity into within and between regions of origins indicated 87 % of the total variation was found within regions of origin, while only 13 % was found between regions of origin. Therefore, the results indicated high genetic diversity between sorghum germplasms grown in major drought prone areas of Ethiopia. This provided a good opportunity to identify best crossing parents to generate best drought tolerant or resistant sorghum varieties in Ethiopia

Keywords: Sorghum, Genetic diversity, Qualitative traits