Quantitative analysis of the effect of selection history on sugar yield adaptation of sugarcane clones

An objective of the CSR sugarcane breeding programme in Australia was to assess the scope for broadening the genetic base of the commercial sugarcane germ plasm through interspecific hybridization with Saccharum spontaneum clones. The contribution of both selection history and S. spontaneum to sugar yield and its components was investigated in the germ plasm pool assembled. The analysis was conducted on a data-set of 256 clones, consisting of parents and full-sib families generated from 32 biparental crosses, tested in six environments. The minimum number of generations back to S. spontaneum ancestor in the clone's pedigree was used as a germ plasm score. The geographical origin and selection history of each parent and their use in the biparental crosses were used to develop a selection history score for parents and offspring. The variation for seven attributes, cane yield, commercial cane sugar %, sugar yield, stalk number per stool, stalk weight, fibre % and ash % juice was partitioned according to the germ plasm and selection history scores. Significant (P < 0.05) clone variation and clone x environment interaction for all attributes was present. The germ plasm scores accounted for a significant (P < 0.05) component of the clone variation for all of the attributes except cane yield. There was an increase in sugar yield with an increase in the minimum number of generations back to a S. spontaneum clone. The selection history groups accounted for a high proportion of the variation among parental clones for all of the attributes except cane yield. This suggested that parents were the outcome of strong selection pressure for the commercial cane attributes. However, the selection history groups for the offspring produced by random mating of parents did not account for a high proportion of the variation for the attributes. Using the mixture method of classification we partitioned the 256 clones into five groups for patterns of performance for the seven attributes across the six environments. The five groups emphasized major differences in the patterns of performance for the seven attributes across environments. The distribution of germ plasm and selection history scores in each of the five groups indicated that their patterns of performance were associated with selection history and minimum generations to S. spontaneum. Therefore, both the analysis on selection history and germ plasm scores (extrinsic classification) and the analysis on the mixture method of classification (intrinsic classification) em- phasized the influence of selection history on the sugar yield of sugarcane.