Early sucrose accumulation, a promising characteristic to use in sugarcane improvement programs
| MSI05P4133 | |
| Nayamuth, A. R. Mangar, M. Ramdoyal, K. Badaloo, M. G. H. | |
| Early sucrose accumulation, a promising characteristic to use in sugarcane improvement programs | |
| periodical article | |
| 2005 | |
| Proc. int. Soc. Sug. Cane Technol. | |
| 25 (2): 421-429 | |
| Also published in Sugar Cane International vol. 23 (3): 15-19 | |
| En | |
| En Fr Sp | |
| In Mauritius, sucrose content of cultivars harvested during the early part of the season is sub-optimal due to a short ripening phase. Amendments in the selection program and adoption of agronomic measures such as artificial ripening only partially solved the problem. The success recorded in other sugar cane industries on this aspect prompted basic studies. They were undertaken to understand the sucrose accumulation mechanism in parents, standards, and seedling populations to redefine breeding and selection strategies for producing cultivars with substantially higher levels of sucrose for earlier harvest. Physiological and cane quality characters were assessed during the exponential phase of growth at the age of seven months and at harvest early in the season at the age of eleven months. Significant differences were recorded among parents and families, at the 99 per cent level, for all characters irrespective of sampling date, and among standards, at the 95 per cent level, in March only. Both significance level and variance were much higher during the growth phase. The best cane quality indicator, pol per cent cane dry matter, varied from 27.67 per cent to 39.45 per cent in the growth phase and from 50.39 per cent and 54.84 per cent at harvest for the families. Categorization of the parents according to their pol per cent cane dry matter in the exponential phase of growth was a better indicator of their sucrose accumulation pattern and maturity behaviour than their sucrose content on a fresh weight basis at harvest. Three distinct maturity groups, early, mid/high sucrose and late were identified when considering sucrose accumulated during the growth phase. The early group accumulated more than 75 per cent of its harvestable sucrose percent cane dry matter at the age of 7 months as opposed to about 55 per cent in the late group. This is a clear indication of the genetic control for earliness as environmental conditions were not conducive to sucrose accumulation. Proposals for improving breeding and selection for earliness are categorization of all parents for their sucrose accumulation pattern and maturity behaviour to enable a better choice, screening during the growth phase on pol per cent dry matter, and the adoption of appropriate standards or increasing the selection pressure. | |
| Sugarcane early sucrose accumulation breeding selection sucrose content sugarcane breeding programmes earliness | |
| Mauritius | |
| Sugarcane: Cane breeding and genetic improvement | |
| Selection: Policies and methods | |
| 2005-02-21 | |
| en | |
| LIB | |
| CAT | |
| PHYS PB |