PERFORMANCE OF SOME PROMISING SUGARCANE VARIETIES GROWN UNDER DIFFERENT ROW SPACINGS AND SEED RATES

Abstract

It is imperative to define precisely the optimal plant population of a variety in order to maximize sugar production at minimum cost. This study was carried out during 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 seasoNS at Mallawi Agric. Res., Station, El-Minia Governorate, Egypt, to investigate the changes in growth, yield and juice quality characters of some promising sugarcane varieties, i.e. G.99-103, G.98-28 and Phil.8013, compared to the commercial variety G.T.54-9 at different row spacing; 80, 100 and 120cm and seed rates (9 and 12- buds/m long) for plant cane. The collected data pointed out that, there were significant differences in stalk length, total soluble solids (TSS), sucrose, purity, reducing sugars, sugar recovery percentages, millable cane yieldand recoverable sugar yield (ton/fed)with increasing row spacings from 80 to 100 and 120 cm in the two growing seasons. Meanwhile, the evaluated sugarcane varieties differed significantly in all studied characters in both seasoNS. Increasing seed rates from 9 to 12-buds/m under the three tested row spacing caused significant difference in stalk length, stalk diameter, and. Generally it is concluded that, G.99-103 variety planted in 100 cm row spacing and 12-buds/m of seed rates (48,000 buds/fed) are preferable under El-Minia for production sugarcane because it gave the highest values of millable cane (59.53 ton/fed) and recoverable sugar yield (6.28 ton/fed ).