Commercial sorghum hybrids and Embrapa's lines were evaluated regarding resistance to sugarcane borer. Two field experiments were conducted in Sete Lagoas, MG, under natural infestation, during the second cropping season in a randomized complete block with 3 replicates. The plants were evaluated regarding to stand, maturity cycle, plant height, and number of broken or lodging stalks and yield. The borer incidence, number of galleries, number of healthy and damaged nodes were also evaluated to calculate the Infestation Index and Intensity Infestation Index. Among the commercial sorghum hybrids, Br 304 and CMSXS 9701 were the least infested wile Z 732 and Esmeralda were the least damaged. Among the lines, the least infested was 9815017 and least damaged 9816003. The two indexes were correlated positively with plant height in both experiments and negatively correlated with the lines cycle. However, there was no correlation between the Indexes for the hybrids. Among the lines the data fit to a logarithmic curve. Although there is a significant variability among commercial sorghum hybrids regarding sugarcane borer susceptibility, under high borer density, a significant yield loss can be computed to all hybrids. On the other hand, the genetic variability regarding sugarcane borer resistance among the sorghum lines indicated a significant potential for use in a breeding program of resistant cultivars.
Insecta; sugarcane borer; sorghum IPM; insect-plant interaction
