The Relation Between the Date of Heading of Nigerian Sorghums and the Duration of the Growing Season

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Abstract
An indigenous variety of sorghum in Northern Nigeria yields best in its own locality. All the local varieties of a locality tend to flower at the same time each year, and this time is associated with the average date on which the rains end in the locality. When a variety is grown elsewhere than in its own locality, it still flowers at a time corresponding to the average end of the wet season in its own locality. Since the rains end progressively earlier from south to north, a variety moved south or north of its own locality will flower either before or after the end of the rains in the new locality, and as a result will yield less than the local varieties of that locality. The adaptation of flowering to the average end of the rains is probably a photoperiodic effect which normally operates several weeks before the end of the rains. It is not a reaction to a critical daylength, but it may be an effect of the number of successively shorter days which the plants experience.

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