Assessment of contender sugarcane clones for morphological traits and biotic tolerance under agro-climatic conditions of tando jam

Sugarcane germplasm comprises different phases (Advance and station yield trial) were planted at the experimental farm of NIA, Tando Jam to evaluate the growth and biotic tolerance performance during September, 2012-13. The selected clones were originated from 09 tissue culture, 7 Canal Point USA, 4 Australia, 3 Barbados and 6 local germplasm sources. Considerable differences for all traits among the advanced lines tested were observed, two clones originated through In vitro mutagenesis showed better performance in term of cane yield as compared to other clones and local checks. In station yield trial only three clones, CSSG-2453, BNIA-87 and soma-clone NIA-1026-P3 produced higher cane yield than the control, Thatta-10. Sugarcane germplasm were evaluated for 09-characters and analyzed for genotypic and phenotypic correlation. These characters revealed that cane yield was associated positively with most of the agronomic traits such as cane height, internodes length and cane thickness. The study of path analysis for yield related traits the highest positive direct effect on cane yield was exerted by cane height. Study of diseases scoring only 05 lines produced disease symptoms. (author)