Historical Notes, Germplasm Development, and Molecular Approaches to Support Sugarcane Breeding Program in Indonesia

In Indonesia, sugarcane and sugar production during the last ten years (2010–2019) fluctuated considerably and showed a declining trend due to several reasons. The achievements of sugarcane production were mainly influenced by the availability of superior sugarcane varieties developed by the domestic sugarcane breeding programs. Historically, sugarcane breeding in Indonesia was started during the Dutch era in the late nineteenth century by Het Proefstation Oost Java (POJ) and the great achievements were the discovery of ‘wonder cane’ POJ 2878 and POJ 3016. Breeding activities carried out by the Indonesian Sugar Research Institute (ISRI), as the successor of POJ, are aimed to address different challenges including those arising from moving sugarcane production from paddy fields to dry and marginal lands, increasing ratoons, and managing climate change and biotic and abiotic stresses. Currently, ISRI is facing serious financial problems, which made breeding activities less optimal. Consequently, germplasm collection, number of crossing, seedling and clone selection, and the number of new released sugarcane varieties in the last 10 years decreased considerably. The decline of ISRI’s breeding activities has prompted several other institutions to carry out breeding programs, namely PT Gunung Madu Plantation, Jengkol Sugar Research Centre of PTPN X, Sukosari Research Centre of PTPN XI, and the Indonesian Sweeteners and Fiber Crops Research Institute (ISFCRI). In principle, the objective of all the breeding programs is to obtain superior varieties with the characteristics as expected by the cane growers such as high cane yield and sugar content, good ratooning ability, resistant to systemic diseases, and borer as well as drought tolerant. Currently, the majority commercial sugarcane varieties planted by cane growers are the old varieties that was released more than 10 years ago, and the most dominant variety is Bululawang (BL). The average sugarcane yield is around 70 t/ha and sugar yield of 5.4 t/ha, which are much lower than that of other sugar producing countries. To improve sugar production several new superior varieties have been released by all the institution during the last 5 years, but the development of those varieties on commercial scale is still limited. In the future, collaboration among the existing sugarcane breeding agencies needs to be improved so that the breeding program could run efficiently and effectively. This review briefly describes the history, obstacles, and challenges of breeding program, as well as molecular approaches and current commercial varieties in Indonesia.