Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is grown predominantly as food crop under rainfed conditions in the semiarid tropics. Besides as a food crop, it also provides nutritious fodder to millions of livestock in Asia and Africa. Development of high yielding dual purpose varieties for both grain and fodder could overcome the demand for grain and fodder. Hence, the present investigation was initiated to identify and isolate the superior transgressive segregants for various fodder and grain yield contributing traits in dual purpose sorghum. Six F₂ families were evaluated for various genetic variability parameters in seven traits viz., plant height (cm), leaf stem ratio, green fodder yield (g), panicle length (cm), panicle weight (g), 100 seed weight (g) and grain yield per plant (g). The results indicated that a wide range of variation was observed among the F₂ families for different characters. The relative magnitude of phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than corresponding genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) for all the characters studied which indicated that these characters had interactions with environment to some extent. For the trait green fodder yield, high heritability coupled with high genetic advance as per cent of mean was observed in two F₂ families viz., CO 28 × IS 0030 and IS 3541 × AKSS 5. This indicated the role of additive gene action for this trait and selection would result in isolation of superior segregants. For grain yield per plant, only one cross IS 6354 × TNS 52 had high PCV and moderate GCV values coupled with high heritability and high GA as per cent of mean. The distribution of the crosses IS 6354 × TNS 52, IS 3541 × AKSS 5 and CO 27 × GSSV 1 was platykurtic in nature indicating the existence of wider variability is these crosses. Hence, selection pressure could be applied in these populations to isolate lines with high grain yield per plant.