EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT EXOTIC SUGARCANE GENOTYPES

This research was conducted at research area of Sugarcane Research Institute (Faisalabad, Pakistan) to evaluate the best sugarcane clones amongst twenty eight clones against two standard varietiesHSF-240 and CPF-249 for different agronomic traits and yield characters during the crop season of 2016-2017 at third selection stage of variety development. In the experiment, three clones (S2014-SL-1322, S2014-SL-1359, S2014-SL-1372) out of twenty eight (11%) were selected on the basis of good performance and did not show splits, lodging tendency, pithiness, aerials roots, disease infestation and these showed good crop stand and thick canes. These three clones were promoted to next stage of variety development cycle. In set-1, Clone S2014-SL-347 gave higher cane yield (58.37 tha-1) with sugar yield of 7.18 tha-1. But it showed some characters of high aerial roots and pithiness and so rejected. In set-II, the clone S2014-SL-1224 gave higher cane yield of 71.51t ha-1 with 8.73t ha-1 sugar yield and showed high disease infestation of red rot and smut and so rejected. But S2014-SL-1322, S2014-SL-1359, S2014-SL-1372 produced cane yield of 71.37 t ha-1 , 68.56 t ha-1 , 67.33 t ha-1 with 8.71 t ha-1, 8.34 t ha-1 , 8.31 t ha-1 sugar yield respectively. The remaining twenty five clones (89%) out of twenty eight were rejected due to diseases susceptibility, lodging, pithiness, poor crop stand, aerial roots and high splits