TITLE:
Influence of Rind Hardness on Sugarcane Quality
AUTHORS:
Sujeet Pratap Singh, Amrita Nigam, Ram Kushal Singh
KEYWORDS:
Rind Hardness; Sugarcane; Genetic Correlation; Sugar Yield-Related Traits
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.4 No.8A,
August
16,
2013
ABSTRACT: Sugar recovery in a factory depends upon regular crushing and quality of
varieties besides various other working parameters. Strategies for increased productivity and
sugar recovery, varietal improvement can bring out through selection of parents
to get maximum gains. These are governed by sugar content, fiber, rind hardness and cane yield.
In order to assess the breeding value
of different traits including rind hardness, study was undertaken at Sugarcane
Research Institute,
Shahjahanpur, during 2011-2012.
Phenotypic difference and correlations among agronomic characters, basic quality
characters and rind hardness in 120 segregating genotypes derived from contrast
bi-parental cross (UP9530 × Co86011) of sugarcane cultivar were
studied in this experiment. All the traits observed were found statistically significant
among the mapping populations. The mean value of rind hardness was 5.91 with a
range from 2.08 to 12.10 among 120 segregating population
including their parents. Rind hardness (RHD) showed significant positive
genotypic correlation with sugar yield-related traits viz; cane weight (CW, r =
0.325), cane yield (CYLD, r = 0.380) and sugar yield (SUYLD, r = 0.248).
Significant negative correlation was observed for rind hardness with commercial
cane sugar percent (CCS%, r = -0.388), number of millable cane (NMC, r = -0.216),
hand refractometer brix %-October (HBR, r = -0.154), Brix% in juice (BR, r = -0.119)
and Sucrose% in juice (SUC, r = -0.080). The simple correlation analysis showed
that RHD, CW, CYLD and SUYLD showed significant positive correlation
for agronomic characters, but for basic quality characters
had negative correlations. Result indicated that rind hardness was found to have economically important trait due to showing significant
positive and negative correlation with sugar yield and sugar content,
respectively. The study also revealed that with the reduction in rind hardness, sugar recovery may increase. Present findings
indicated that the rind hardness could play
as a key role in the selection of elite genotypes in breeding program to
develop high sugar, high yielding, erect, non-lodging, disease
and insect resistant varieties. The details of the study were discussed in the manuscript.