Our 2025 EFN seed catalogue is now live! Featuring over 130 new varieties and over 640 total varieties, sourced from over 50 different growers from across the country. Huge thanks to all of our growers, volunteers, and to our stellar seed-house team in Minnesota! Each of you make this work possible.

'Tepehuán' Sorghum

'Tepehuán' Sorghum

$4.00 Sale

Sorghum bicolor subsp. bicolor

Origin: Tepehuán people (northern Mexico)

Improvement status: Cultivar

Seeds per packet: ~50

Germination tested 11/2024: 94%

Life cycle: Annual

We love sorghum, so we're very excited to be offering this beautiful and interesting variety, a multi-use type with good kernels for popping and sweet juicy canes. While sorghum is an African crop, it has been adopted by farmers around the world due to its drought tolerance, pest resistance, nutritional value, good taste, and prolific seed production. Long before sorghum became popular among European-descended farmers in the US southeast (where it's still grown today for sorghum syrup production), Indigenous farmers in the southwest took to sorghum and adapted it to their tastes and growing conditions. To this day, you can even find a few places where Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica still grow sorghum and treat it just like corn, even nixtamalizing the seeds to make tortillas.

As of this writing, there are only a handful of sorghum varieties available in the US seed market rooted in Indigenous cultures on this continent. But there are some significant ones. The first sorghum ever grown by EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman is one such ('Caña Ganchado'), as is 'Raramuri Popping Sorghum', and so is this 'Tepehuán.'

The Tepehuán people live in northern Mexico, specifically in the states of Durango, Jalisco, and Chihuahua. Their language is in the Uto-Aztecan family, and most closely related to O'odham, spoken by peoples in both Mexico and Arizona (the border, of course, being an arbitrary colonial imposition). The Tepehuán homeland features rugged mountains and other primarily arid landscapes, so their sorghum is well-adapted to dry environments. This variety has delicious blonde-colored seed that are excellent for popping like popcorn. They can also be ground into flour or smashed into grits. The sweet and juicy canes are good for syrup production too.

Our seed comes from our friend Laura Parker of High Desert Seed and Gardens in Colorado.