Sorghum: The Gluten-Free, Non-GMO, Climate Resilient Cereal for the 21st Century.

The genetic control of crop and grain quality has been a critical goal in breeding programs since their inception in the early 20^th century.  With increasing interest in global food security, more recent efforts in crop biofortification have moved to the forefront of improvement programs, particularly in Africa and Southern Asia.  Sorghum, a robust crop of African origin, now benefits from its innate level of diversity coupled with an improved understand of its genome to target genes and affect traits of importance contributing to quality characteristics.  To elucidate the current state of progress for sorghum, three brief case studies are presented to establish where we are with our understanding of the breadth of quality traits and their associated genetic bases.  Our immediate goals are to quantify the type and amount of useful variation for each compositional component, to understand its control, and to support breeding efforts through making the source germplasm available worldwide and optimizing products for the ultimate stakeholders.