Role of Plant Growth Promoters on Sugarcane Production Propagated Through Budchips in Semiarid Region of Pakistan

One of the alternative ways of sugarcane sett planting is to sow excised sugarcane buds, popularly called as budchips. Despite the advantages of budchip technology, sugarcane growers are failed to achived higher production under field conditions due to rapid exhaustion of small sized storage tissue (budchip). Evaluate the role of varied concentrations of nephtahline acetic acid and calcium chloride on growth, production and quality of budships in semi-arid condition during two consecutive spring seasons of 2018 and 2019. Results from both years 2018 and 2019, showed that significantly (P ≤ 0.05) improved in sprouting establishment (86%), leaf area index (11.98 and 11.96), leaf area duration (1272 and 1293 days), crop growth rate (11.58 and 11.02 g m-2 day-1), net assimilation rate (2.53 and 2.55 g m-2 day-1), cane height (203 and 224 cm), number of tillers m-2 (27 and 26), cane diameter (2.97 and 3.01 cm), stripped cane yield (101.98 and 98.52 t ha-1), commercial can sugar (14.45 and 14.39%), sugar yield (16.77 and 16.75 t ha-1) were recorded in budchips soaked with CaCl2 2% + NAA 2 ppm. In above studied traits, significantly (P ≤ 0.05) minimum was recorded in budchips soaked with CaCl2 0% + NAA 0 ppm (control). On the basis of above results, it might be recommended to farmers who want to adopt this budchip technology should soaked budchips within 2% solution of CaCl2 with 2 ppm NAA that was suitable for improving growth, yield and quality of sugarcane budchip.