Talk:Sorghum bicolor

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[edit] Sweet sorghum

There seems to be a contradiction between this page and the "Commercial Sorghum" page. One states that sweet sorghum is a varity that produces sweet, juicy grains and is thus equivalent to sweet corn. The the other claims that that sweet sorghum is synonymous with forage sorghum, ie stock feed.Ethel Aardvark 08:27, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

The apparent contradiction stems from your assumption that "sweet and juicy" was referring to the grain, which it does not. It refers to the stalk which is sweet, juicy, and stringy much like sugar cane. PurdueAG 05 (talk) 06:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, the stalk of sweet sorghum is used to make sorghum molasses NOT the seed. Also,the botanical name for sweet sorghum is sorghum vulgare. Any traveler who drives through kansas will plainly see that grain sorghum is much shorter than sweet sorghum. Please note that the botanical name for broom corn is sorghum bicolor, look at the length of the brush on this plant. This should be the obvious sign. As a newbie who has few skills in the wikipedia world I'd like to request that some changes be made to the sorguhm info around here. Those who've mistakenly labeled proso millet as broom corn please remove that name from the definition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Broom Maker (talk • contribs) 04:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Re merge proposed by PDH at 04:18, 28 August 2007, I think that a merge is probably not a good idea in this case. Sorghum bicolor is about a species, titled as scientific name, and I think a natural focus for botanical interest, whereas commercial sorghum is about use, which is identifiably different, and furthermore does include other species (if fractionally). I think that confusion could result from the conflation of statements on the specific and general if the articles were merged. ENeville 19:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess this proposal is not up to date anymore, but still: I think merging would be a bad idea, as Sudan Grass is od the species Sorghum sudanese (oh, it's not mentioned in the list), which is becoming (or is already) an important energy crop, e.g. used for the production of biogas. Sorghum sudanese wouldn't fit in Sorghum bicolor, which would result in all information on the energetic use being stored in the species article. Much better to have a summary in commercial sorgum --Cornixx (talk) 08:40, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking over wiki, I found three pages that relate to this topic: Sorghum, Sorghum bicolor, and Commercial_sorghum. The first is a very botanical oriented page focus on the Genus Sorghum that is of reasonable quality. I feel that important botanical items mentioned in the comments above are covered in by this article. The other two articles are the ones under discussion for merger. I find Sorghum_bicolor to be a short stub in desperate need of attention. Commercial_sorghum is very general covering much more then just the grain or forage crop. Because of this, I support merging these two articles.PurdueAG 05 (talk) 06:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)