Recent Achievements of Egyptian Sugarcane Breeding Program

Abstract

Egyptian sugarcane breeding program depends upon natural flowering and artificial flowering. Natural flowering at El-Sabahia Agriculture Research Station (31.2 N latitude), Alexandria, Egypt is used to evaluate number of sugarcane germplasm for natural flowering ability and determine their flowering dates. The natural flowering season extendes from November, 1 to the end of June. Artificial flowering conducts at Giza Agriculture Research Station (30.01 N latitude), Giza, Egypt and used to estimate the number of inductive cycles for inducing the desirable parents from the available germplasms in the program to flower and synchronize their flowering dates to make planed crosses. Fuzz produced from planed crosses is used to establish the seedling stage, which follow by other selection stages to develop improving sugarcane variety. Increasing the size of the germplasm collection, promising clones at all selection stages and registration of Giza.3 and Giza.4 verities were the recent achievements of the breeding program. In addition to, resistant to smut disease Giza.3 and Giza.4 varieties have high cane and sugar yields. Besides, Giza.3 is an early mature variety and Giza.4 is a moderate mature variety.