Muhammad Khalid¹ , Hidayat ur Rahman² , Farhatullah Farhatullah² , Ashiq Rabbani³ , Mohammad Tahir¹ , Abdus Samad¹ , David A. Lightfoot⁴

1 Agricultural Research System, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Peshawar, Pakistan
2 Department of Plan Breeding and Genetics, The University of Agricultural, Peshawar, Pakistan
3 Plant Genetic Resource Institute, National Agriculture Research Center( NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan
4 Department of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; and Plant Science and General Agriculture, Carbondale, Illinois, 62901, Pakistan
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2016, Vol. 7, No. 5   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0005
Received: 11 May, 2016    Accepted: 30 Jun., 2016    Published: 25 Jul., 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Khalid M., ur Rahman H., Farhatullah, Rabbani A., Tahir M., Samad A., and Lightfoot D.A., 2016, Genetic variations in field condition clonally replicated sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) cultivars on the basis of morphological and quality traits, Plant Gene and Trait, 7(5): 1-12 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0005)

This study is an initiative approach to assess the genetic variation on basis of enormous morphological and qualitative attributes for future breeding selection. A set of 16 sugarcane clones were evaluated in the fields of Sugar Crops Research Institute (SCRI), Mardan.- Pakistan during the spring cropping season of  2011-12. The clones were analyzed for 40 morphological (qualitative and quantitative) traits in a randomized complete block (RCB), design with four replications. Variations were measured for 16 morphological quantitative traits (1^st germination, 2^nd germination, 1^st tillering, 2^nd tillering, 1^st plant height, 2^nd plant height, leaf length, leaf width, leaf area, number of nodes per cane, internode length, weight of five unstrapped canes, weight of five strapped canes, yield, weight of trash and tops and number of millable canes), 20 morphological qualitative traits (cane height, cane color, hardiness, thickness, leaf colour, attitude, leaf shape, legule size, dewlap color, pith, bud shape, lodging, streaks, wax, tillering, pubescence, growth, maturity, tops and trash) and  four qualitative laboratory traits (corrected brix percentage, pol percentage, purity percentage and recovery percentage). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, standard errors, variances and ranges) which showed considerable diversity among the studied sugarcane clones. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) exhibited highly significant difference (p<0.01) for  1^st  and 2^nd germination, 1^st  and 2^nd tillering, 1^st  and 2^nd plant height,  yield,  number of millable canes,  number of nodes per plant, internode length, weight of five unstripped canes, weight of five stripped canes. Moderately, significant differences (0.01< p <0.05) were recorded for leaf length, leaf area, as well as sugar purity and recovery. Cluster analyses were performed on the 40 different traits which divided the 16 sugarcane clones in to two main clusters (cluster I and cluster II) and two sub-clusters (IIA and IIB) which might reflect the genetic variations.  Principal component analysis, reduced morphological variables to five independent linear combinations. The principal components of variables had Eigen values >1 and accounted for 84.04% of the total variance in the data. Analysis of the principal components inferred that 1^st and 2^nd tillering, 1^st and 2^nd plant height, weight of five unstripped canes, leaf area, millable canes, 1^st and 2^nd germination were the major parameters of variation. High degrees of variations were observed for most of the traits. Our analysis has described that the promising performance for all the traits and spatially for yield and sugar has shown by the genotype MS-99-HO-317 followed by the genotype MS-91-CP-238. It is concluded from this research that these two genotypes will be released for farmers community in the next year after approval from the VAC (Variety Approval Committee). Moreover, the breeders can use these genotypes in their future breeding program to achieve some better performing lines.

Genetic variations; Morphological; Sugarcane; Quantitative and qualitative traits