Seed Setting of Sugar Cane in South Africa

Abstract

IT has been generally believed that sugar cane in South Africa does not produce viable pollen and hence fails to set seed. For this reason, sugar cane seed has been imported for the purpose of breeding new varieties from other countries. When the flowers of a number of varieties were examined by me in 1944, however, several had pollen grains which seemed normal and which the iodine test showed to be starch-filled. Pollen grains were found germinating on stigmas under natural conditions, and were also successfully germinated on the agar medium described by Sartoris1. Seed collected from the varieties Glagah, Co. 205 and Co. 301 gave in all thirty-six seedlings; these are believed to be the first true sugar cane seedlings raised from seed set on the African continent. Although seedlings from Amu Darya which, like Glagah, is a variety of Saccharum spontaneum, had previously been obtained at the Experiment Station, and although some varieties had been found with starch-filled pollen-grains, no seedlings of a cultivated type of sugar cane had ever been raised.