Character Association among Yield and Quality Traits in Early Maturing Sugarcane Clones

Eleven early maturing sugarcane clones were planted in Randomized Block Design for this study. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships among the yield and quality parameters with cane yield and sugar yield in sugarcane, in order to provide information to help breeders in adopting traits for developing high yield and quality varieties. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among genotypes for eleven yield and quality characters. Highest cane yield (176.66 t/ha) was recorded in clone 2015R10 and highest Commercial Cane Sugar (CCS) % (14.16) were observed in Co C 671. Correlation coefficient results indicated that cane yield was positively correlated with germination (0.166), number of millable canes (0.210), cane length (0.650), cane girth (0.610), single cane weight (0.880), CCS yield (0.518) whereas Brix% (-0.838), Sucrose% (-0.821), Purity % (-0.720) and CCS % (-0.812) showed negative correlation with cane yield. Sugar yield per hectare is positively correlated with purity% (0.187), cane length (0.413), cane girth (0.503), single cane weight (0.515) and cane yield (0.518). Results indicate that the genotypes should be selected on the basis of cane length, cane girth and single cane weight for getting higher sugarcane yield.