A trait of importance to sugarcane growers is the consistency of yield in ratoon crops. Variability exists in yield performance of ratoon crops, along with inability to predict yield. If clonal performance for yield robustness across ratoon crops could be predicted, release of varieties that had good performance in the first ratoon and poor performance in later ratoons, with an associated economic penalty, could be avoided. Genomic selection has great potential in sugarcane through more rapid identification and creation of varieties with higher yields from ratoon crops. This could lead to accelerating innovation in varietal development, lowering development costs and shortening cycle-times for new higher yielding varieties.

This project will assess the prediction accuracy of the ratoon performance in the SRA breeding program. Using the genomic information from previous research, the industry is in a unique position to further expand predictions in the SRA breeding program to estimate the robustness of yield across ratoon crops in different growing regions.