The Benefits of the Sugarcane Crop

1. Introduction

Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is perennial herb plants belongs to Poaceae family, and has been widely cultivated on tropical and subtropical regions globally. Sugarcane is genetically complex crop that possesses highly variable chromosome number (octaploid; x = 10; 8x = 80). Being highly cross pollinated in nature, this crop requires specific, hot and humid climate for flowering (Gill et al, 2006). It is mainly propagated vegitatively by stem cutting and it gives many tillers at the bottom of the stool. Although the major industries are found in Brazil, China and India, the crop is also commercially produced in many other countries, including Ethiopia. Sugar cane has been 1.71 billion tones cane production and 71.7 tones/ha yield in 23.9 million hectares in the World; 89.594 million tones cane production and 56.81 tones/ha yield in 1.577 million hectares in Africa and also 2.4 million tone cane production and 126.9 tones/ha yield in 19000 hectares in Ethiopia (FAOSTA, 2012). In Ethiopia average annual sugar production is 300, 000 tons which covers only 60% country`s domestic consumption, the difference 40% covers from abroad importation (ESC, 2013.http://www.etsugar.gov.et/en/ products/product-types.html).The annual per capital sugar consumption in the world, Africa and Ethiopia is 24.3, 16.06 and 5.5kg/year respectively (ISO, 2012). It is a high valued cash crop and exclusive source of 75% world sugar production (Lakshmanan et al, 2006 and FAO, 2004). This multipurpose crop is mainly cultivated for its sweet stem. It also provides many by-products for bio-factory such as alcohol, butanol, acetic acid, plywood, industrial enzymes, animal feed and paper besides, sugar and energy (Garcia et al, 2007). Undou...

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...cols for large scale clonal propagation of sugarcane production using apical meristem will be useful for commercialization and cultivation.

Keeping the above described scenario in view, this study will be carried out to establish such protocol for genetically uniform in vitro mass propagation of plantlets from apical meristem of different sugarcane genotypes, which will ultimately reduce the final cost and time of generated plantlets.

2. Objectives

The main objective of this study is to develop optimal protocol for in vitro mass clonal propagation of different sugar cane genotypes from apical meristem culture.

The specific objectives are:

To optimize the effect of BAP and NAA in combination and alone for shoot multiplication.

To optimize the effect of NAA for the root induction of micro shoots.

To optimize the effect of table sucrose in shoot multiplication