Evaluation 16 elite sugarcane lines for ethanol yield and yield related traits under rainfed conditions

Abstract

The world demand for clean renewable energy has seen a rise in use of sugarcane in production of bioenergy products like bio-ethanol which is produced from molasses and extracted juice of stalk. This then brings a competition between production for food and for bioenergy in the sugarcane industry. Therefore, this calls for breeders and producers to develop and produce high yielding sugarcane varieties to meet the demand. We undertook a study with the aim to screen the recently released elite lines for the ethanol yield and related traits. The study was conducted in two locations under rainfed conditions in Maha Sarakham, Thailand. The results showed that all the locations had no effect on the studied genotypes thus suggesting that they are stable over different locations. The mean values show that SG. KK07-478 and RT2004-085 showed better performance recording higher juice yield, juice weight, TSS, percent of ethanol and estimated ethanol yield in both locations. We found interaction between location and variety except in TSS and percent of ethanol, RT2004-085 showed the highest TSS, juice weight, SG, PE and EEY in combine both locations. A high correlation of EEY to juice yield (0.967***) and juice weight (0.978***) also percent ethanol was highly correlated with TSS (0.953**) this then suggest that to improve ethanol yield breeders should focus on improved the performance of juice yield, juice weight and the TSS. Because of the higher performance, KK07-478 and RT2004-085 should further be evaluated in several other locations before they are adopted by farmers