Variety Improvement Programme

 

Research Projects: Variety Improvement Programme

Breeding and Selection
Identifying molecular markers for resistance to thrips.
Improving breeding efficacy by identifying rust resistance gene Bru1 in breeding and LD2 population.
Markers for colour and ethanol (lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose).
Genomics of quantitative disease resistance in sugarcane.
Molecular identification of interspecific hybrids using molecular markers and cytological investigations.
 Variety Characterisation
Mining the research database to categorise the reaction of released varieties to water stress.
Investigating the factors associated with less damaging nematode communities.
Investigating variety ratooning dynamics.
 
Novel and Improved Traits
Analysis of transgenic sugarcane lines designed to test perturbed sugar metabolism.
Drought tolerance induced in sugarcane by genetic modification.
Overcoming transgene silencing in sugarcane.
Unlocking genetic variation in sugarcane for disease resistance.
Improved nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) via GM technology.
Medium and long-term conservation of strategically-important transgenic germplasm.
Characterisation and isolation of mutated ALS gene with a high tolerance to imazapyr in sugarcane.
 
Sugarcane Metabolism
Sugar sensing and signaling-mediated regulation of photosynthesis in sugarcane.
Research Focus: Genomics and Bioinformatics
Re-breeding sugarcane for the future: Innovations through plant genome sequence mining and sugarcane genome sequencing.
 
Long Term Projects
Plant Breeding
Variety Evaluation