Abstract
In spite of the costly procurement and secondary acclimatization activities, the Ethiopia Sugar estates use huge quantity of micropropagated sugarcane plantlets to complement the conventional propagation method. The current study was aimed at finding rapid and cost effective propagation method for sugarcane planting materials multiplication to complement in vitro propagation method. In the study, acclimatized sugarcane plantlets were treated with Diammonium phosphate fertilizer (DAP), plant growth regulators and leaf trimming treatments. Plantlets lacking fertilizer, plant growth regulators and without trimming were used as free check. Data were collected on the number of tillers per shoot, average shoot length and number of leaves per shoot after 30 days. Analysis of variance revealed that the interaction effects of genotypes, trimming, DAP and plant growth regulators application was very highly significant (p<0.0001). Treatment combinations containing DAP at 0.16 gm L-1 m-2 with plant growth regulators GA3, BAP and kinetin each at 0.04 mg L-1 m-2 and trimming one-third of the leaves gave optimum in vivo shoot proliferation responses. On this treatment combination, B52-298 gave 6.45 ± 0.51 tillers per shoot with 4.39 ± 1.44 cm average shoot length and 5.12 ± 0.23 leaves per shoot while NCo-334 produced 5.77± 0.79 tillers per shoot with 7.21 ± 0.11 cm average shoot length and 5.51 ± 0.05 leaves per shoot. Similarly, N14 gave 5.36 ± 0.55 tillers per shoot with 5.71 ± 0.15 cm average shoot length and 5.41 ± 0.30 leaves per shoot on the same treatment combination. Thus, the current result can be used as rapid and cost effective sugarcane planting material multiplication system to complement the costly micropropagation technology and hence minimize the cost of sugar production.
Highlights
Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is one of the most versatile cash crops grown extensively all over the world [1,2]
For the three sugarcane genotypes, the lowest number of tillers per shoot was found on treatment lacking trimming, plant growth regulators (PGR) and Diammonium phosphate fertilizer (DAP) fertilizer, i.e., on the control treatment (Table 3: T1)
For all the three sugarcane genotypes, the highest number of tillers per shoot was recorded on trimmed (1/3 of the leaves) plantlets having plant growth regulators (GA3, BAP and Kinetin each at 0.04 mg L-1 m-2) and DAP fertilizer at 0.16 gm L-1 m-2) (Table 3: T8 and Figure 1: 1a-1c). This result revealed that the combined application of plant growth regulators (GA3, BAP and Kinetin) and DAP fertilizer along with trimming of Source of variations
Summary
Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is one of the most versatile cash crops grown extensively all over the world [1,2] It is a monocotyledonous [3,4], tall growing perennial tropical grass (C4 plant) that tillers at the base to produce unbranched stems [5,6]. Sugarcane is cultivated on more than 60,000 ha and the four sugar mills produce about 300,000 tonnes of sugar which only covers about 60% of the annual demand for domestic consumption while the deficit is imported from abroad In spite of this fact, Ethiopia is endowed with favorable climate, enormous land and water resources for large scale irrigated sugarcane agriculture [8]. The Ethiopian Government is implementing a large scale expansion and new green field sugar development programs with the objective of boosting the country’s annual sugar production both to satisfy the domestic sugar demand and exploit the international sugar market
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