Avaliação de produção de sorgo (Sorghum bicolor [L.] Moench) em sistema de plantio irrigado e sequeiro

Sorghum is a herbaceous, monocotyledonous plant that is part of the grass family. It is a cereal from the African continent, domesticated 5,000 years ago and is currently being used both for animal and human food, in addition to participating in the synthesis of bioenergy and the manufacture of brooms. It is a culture adapted to the tropical climate and resistant to drier and hotter environments. Furthermore, sorghum can be divided into 5 types - forage, grain, biomass, broom and saccharine - however, the grain and forage types gain greater prominence in the market because they have more impact on the economy. In Brazil, the crop occupies the seventh position in the world production ranking, which shows a significant expansion of the cultivation of this grass. A major challenge today is the production of food for both human and animal consumption, efficiently and sustainably, aiming for greater production using fewer resources and, even so, maintaining a quality standard accepted in the market. The present study sought to evaluate and describe the productivity and dry matter content of forage sorghum intended for feeding ruminants in an irrigated and rainfed system, in the years 2021 and 2022, in a property located in the northern region of Minas Gerais. The collected data were organized, emphasizing the main parameters related to productivity, for further analysis and the results showed that the productivity of irrigated sorghum was higher than that of rainfed sorghum (11.56 t/ha) and the average percentage of dry matter were 35.8% and 36.5% for irrigated and rainfed planting, respectively. Thus, it is considered that sorghum has the ability to use available water resources, even under stress conditions, as it is more adapted to environments with low water availability and high temperatures, not affecting its productivity, regardless of whether the crop is rainfed or dry. irrigated. Therefore, it is concluded that rainfed sorghum constitutes an alternative to reduce costs in the production of forage sorghum in the semi-arid region.