Evaluation of sugarcane seedlings from biparental crosses using different growth substrates.

: Raising sugarcane seed from the fuzz or true seed is extremely confronted by lack of easily available growth substrates. This trial was initiated to attempt to find a locally suitable and an economically feasible growth media for sugarcane seedling establishment Five growth substrates using seedlings generated from the true sugarcane seed or fuzz from three different biparental crossing blocks were used. The fuzz harvested in the 2000/2001 cropping season in Numan, Nigeria was planted to substrate treatments during the 2001/2002 cropping season and evaluated in a completely randomised design in the laboratory before transfer to nursery beds for hardening in polyethylene bags and finally to the fields for subsequent and further evaluations. Results show that sole vermiculite showed superiority to the other substrates with respect to earliness, top seedling emergence and the quantity of seedlings emergence across all the cross combinations. Mixture of vermiculite and sterilised topsoil also showed good response to seedling emergence and seedling number in the three cross groups although this was not significantly different to the vermiculite. The implications of these results to present challenges in sugarcane breeding in Nigeria are discussed.