Gurugram: The regional centre of the Coimbatore-based Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Haryana’s Karnal town has developed a new variety of sugarcane that is likely to replace the Co-0238 variety, which had brought about a revolutionary improvement in crop yield and sugar content since 2009 but has now becoming unsustainable because of its susceptibility to red rot and top borer diseases.
The new variety, Co-17018, has been developed by Ravinder Kumar Yadav, a senior scientist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), to which the Sugarcane Breeding Institute is affiliated.
Co-17018 has tolerance to red rot and top borer and gives better yield and sugar content than the Co-0238 variety being largely grown in northern India.
“Co-17018 is a mid-late variety of sugarcane as against Co-0238, which is an early variety. The proposal for the release of my variety is now before the central sub-committee on crop standards, notification and release of varieties for agricultural crops, after trial and approval by the varietal identification committee,” Yadav told ThePrint Thursday.
“The committee, through a notification, releases a particular variety for cultivation in a particular zone for a period of 20 years. Once notified, the Co-17018 variety will be available to farmers for sowing,” he added.
Yadav said that before approval by the varietal identification committee in October last year, trials for the new variety were held at multiple locations.
“The committee grants approval only after a new variety shows 5 per cent or more improvement in yield and sugar content and also shows tolerance to diseases it claims to have resistance to,” he added.
Yadav further explained that while the early variety sugarcane develops extractable sugar in 8 to 9 months, it takes more than 12 months for the mid-late varieties to do so.
According to Yadav, sugarcane is being cultivated on nearly 55 lakh hectares of land in India, which is the second highest in the world after Brazil, where the crop is cultivated on 100 lakh hectares.
Of the 55 lakh hectares in India, nearly 60 percent of the area under cultivation is in Uttar Pradesh (29 to 30 lakh hectares) alone, and of this nearly 60 percent is under the Co-0238 variety.
In Haryana, the average area under sugarcane cultivation is 1 lakh hectares and the majority of sugarcane farmers have been cultivating the Co-0238 variety.
Developed in 2009, the Co-0238 variety proved to be a boon for farmers because of its good yield and sugar content, but now red rot and top borer disease have become a major cause of concern, said Vijender Singh, a farmer from Karnal.
“Due to the top borer, the length of sugarcane remains short leading to a decrease in the weight of the crop. Red rot, on the other hand, affects the sugar content. We hope the new variety can address these problems,” Singh told ThePrint.
Yadav explained that though the yield of the crop varies from year to year, depending on the climatic conditions, the Co-0238 variety has been giving an average yield of 85 to 100 tonnes per hectare and sugar content of 11 to 12 percent.
“The new variety has shown slightly better results in yield as well as sugar content. More importantly, the variety has tolerance to red rot and top borer,” he added.
According to Yadav, crop varieties generally show improvement in the years following their release for cultivation. When released in 2009, the Co-0238 variety gave a yield of 81 tonnes per hectare, while now it is giving a yield of 85 to 100 tonnes per hectare.
He also said that the new variety has the added advantage of better foliage on the top of the plant that farmers generally use as cattle fodder.
According to Yadav, unlike other crops such as wheat and cotton, seed manufacturing companies in the private sector are not in the business of sugarcane crops.
“Normally, farmers looking for advanced seeds and technology first contact the Sugarcane Breeding Institute for newer varieties. We also receive orders (for new seed varieties) from sugar mills, because they are the ones most affected by the loss of sugar content in the sugarcane crops. If a new variety is really good in terms of yield and sugar content and is tolerant to pathogens, it will replace the old varieties in the next two-three years, but if it is poor, it will be wiped off,” he added.
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What are red rot and top borer diseases?
M.L. Chhabra, principal scientist and head of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute’s regional centre in Karnal, said that red rot and top borer have become a big issue for both farmers and sugar mills. “The new variety is expected to address both these things,” he added.
Red rot is characterised by interrupted red and white patches within the cane along with a sour alcoholic odour when the cane is split open. Caused by a fungus, red rot leads to a fall in sugar content in the sugarcane crop.
The top borer on the other hand is a moth that damages sugarcane plants by boring or tunnelling inside the plant stems, thereby leaving them shorter in length.
According to Virender Lather, former principal scientist at ICAR, any sugarcane variety has a life of 15 years after which it becomes prone to pest attacks.
“Pathogens keep mutating, and to save crops from their attacks, scientists have to mutate the plants via hybridisation. Specific genes are added to new varieties to make them tolerant to pathogens. But when pathogens get nothing to eat because of the newer varieties, they too mutate. This is exactly what is happening to the Bt cotton varieties which have been facing bollworm attacks in the past couple of years,” said Lather.
He explained that in plant pathology, this is referred to as the “boom and bust” cycle, where new varieties holding effective tolerance to pathogens are grown in large areas (boom), until the pathogens mutate and bust the resistance.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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