Selection in energy cane families

Luís Cláudio Inácio Da Silveira,Luiz Alexandre Peternelli,Heroldo Weber,Edelclaiton Daros,Márcio Henrique Pereira Barbosa,Bruno Portela Brasileiro,Volmir Kist

doi:10.1590/1984-70332016v16n4a45

Luís Cláudio Inácio Da Silveira, Luiz Alexandre Peternelli + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-70332016v16n4a45

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Abstract

Abstract The objective of this study was to identify superior parents for crosses and the best families to breed new clones of energy cane. The best-performing parents were RB867515, RB93509, KRAKATAU, IM76-228, IM76-229, and US85-1008. The heritability and accuracy values for the traits tons of cane per hectare, fiber, and sucrose content indicate high correlation between the predicted genotypic means and observed values, enabling efficient selection of the best cane energy families. The extensive genetic variation detected and the presence of promising seedlings in the selected segregating population indicate the possibility of using new crosses in some clones and even in future commercial plantings. It was possible to identify the best parents involved in the evaluated crosses, and to select, in the best families, seedlings with a high fiber and good sucrose content, seedlings with high fiber and low sugar content, as well as seedlings with the same fiber and sucrose contents as the current cultivars.

Highlights

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is one of the most efficient crops in converting solar into chemical energy (Tew and Cobill 2008)
The mean family heritability (h2) was high for the traits FIB%, SC% and TCH.5r, which allowed selection of the best families, with accuracy higher than 76%, suggesting a high correlation between the predicted and actual mean genotypic values of the evaluated families, which indicates the possibility of genetic gain with selection of the best families (Table 1)
Since the technological analyses were carried out in only two replications, only the cane yield data of the same plots could be used to estimate the genetic parameters of the traits tons of fiber per hectare (TFH) and tons of sucrose per hectare (TSH), which is exactly what contributed to the low heritability of these traits (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is one of the most efficient crops in converting solar into chemical energy (Tew and Cobill 2008). Sugarcane breeding focused on the development of cultivars with higher sucrose yield for sugar and ethanol production (Dal-Bianco et al 2012, Santchurn et al 2014, Iaia et al 2014, Barbosa et al 2015, Carneiro et al 2015). The current demand for a higher biomass volume to produce second generation ethanol and electricity generates new research lines initiated for the development of cultivars with higher fiber content, the so-called cane energy (Santchurn et al 2014, Silveira et al 2015a, Silveira et al 2015b). The reason is that S. spontaneum has a higher fiber content than the other species

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