EVALUATION OF VARIOUS SUGARCANE CLONES AT PRELIMINARY YIELD TRIAL.

Climate change, water shortage, and costlier inputs are main issues in sugarcane productivity across sugarcane growing areas of the country. Sugarcane is a valuable cash crop and rewarding sector of agriculture. Varietal development process depends upon selection of successive clonal generations; among these preliminary yield trial (Nursery-III) is fourth selection stage. Thirty four (34) clones were tested in three sets using Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replication during 2017-18 at research farm of Sugarcane Research Institute, Ayub Agricultural Research Institute, Faisalabad, Pakistan. The clones were evaluated using five basic biometric parameters keeping in view the farmer's and miller's demand. The genetic variability and performance of all clones was checked by using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Among all 34 clones, 16 clones were promoted into next selection stage while taking HSF-240 and SPF-245 as check varieties. The clones S2015-SL-10, S2015-SL-89, S2015-SL-101 and S2015-SL-624 produced sugar yield more than 13 tons per hectare. These clones may give future hope for current varietal development program subject to showing good performance in next selection stages because further selection stages will decide the fate of suchclones. The promising clones among these may be selected as candidate variety for approval after evaluating their performance in farmer's field trials and under national trials in different sugarcane growing areas of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]