Madhavi V Purankar, Dipak K Sarode and Rachayya M Devarumath
Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering Section, Vasantdada Sugar Institute, Manjari (Bk.), Pune, Maharashtra, India; rm.devarumath@vsisugar.org.in
The importance of sugarcane and its products in food, paper and ethanol industrieshas led to its continued demand and assurance of returns from these industries has made it a most favored cash crop for cultivation in India. However, salinity is one of the major constraints in sugarcane production in India and worldwide. In-vitro mutagenesis was implemented for improvement in three different sugarcane varieties, Co 86032, Co 740 and CoM 0265. Embryogenic calli were exposed to gamma radiation, regenerated plantlets were selected on NaCl media and further evaluated on saline and controlled field conditions. Inter Retro-transposon Amplified Polymorphism (IRAP) Sequence Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) and Target Region Amplification Polymorphism (TRAP) were used to evaluate polymorphism in 16 field selected clones compared to their three parental varieties. A total of 606 fragments were amplified, with 8 IRAP, 4 SRAP and 3 TRAP primers differentiating mutants from their parental varieties. Among these, IRAP primers were the most effective in detecting variations, followed by SRAP primers.