QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF NEWLY SELECTED SUGARCANE VARIETIES

Assessment of morphological variations in sugarcane clones was done on the basis of five quantitative (germination %, number of tillers, plant height, cane yield, and number of millable canes) and four qualitative (c. brix %, pol %, purity % and sugar recovery) attributes. The experiment was grown in the spring cropping season of 2010-11 at Sugar Crops Research Institute (SCRI), Mardan-Pakistan in RCB, design with four replications and plot size of 67 m2 (10m x 6.7m). A total of 16 sugarcane clones comprising 14 candidate clones i.e., MS-91-CP-272, MS-94- CP- 15, MS-91-CP-238, MS-92-CP-979, MS-99-HO-391, S-97CP-288, MS-99-HO-317, RS-97-N-45, MS-99-HO-388, MS-99-HO-675, MS-99-HO-93, S-96-SP-1215, Hoth-127 and CP-89-831 and two approved varieties i.e., CP77/400 and Mardan-93 were used in the experiment. The latter two were used as a check. The ANOVA exhibited significant (p≤0.05) differences among the clones for germination %, number of tillers, plant height, number of millable canes, cane yield, purity % and sugar recovery where as non-significant (p≥0.05) variations were revealed for c. brix %, and pol % . The mean data showed highest yield of 113.38 t ha^-1 for MS-99-HO-317, followed by RS-97-N-45 (88.81 t ha^-1) both being superior to the check cultivars whereas the lowest yield of 67.51 t ha^-1 was given by check clone-II i.e., Mardan-93. Similarly the maximum sugar recovery of 11.25 was exhibited by MS-99-HO-93, followed by check clone-II i.e., Mardan-93 (11.24) whereas the lowest recovery of 9.89 was recorded for the clone MS-99-HO-388.