Standardizing Planting Agro-techniques for Sugarcane Tissue Culture Plantlets and Bud Chip Settlings

With the objectives of standardizing planting agro-techniques for sugarcane tissue culture plantlets (TCP) and bud chip settlings, a field experiment was conducted during 2016–17 and 2017–18 at ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore, India. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with three replications. Forty-five days after planting, TCP exhibited significantly higher tillering potentiality (118.1 × 103) than bud chip settling (57.9 × 103). At harvest, striking differences were observed in yield contributing parameters of two planting materials, wherein bud chip settling recorded higher plant height (186.0 cm) and single cane weight (1.3 kg) than tissue culture plantlets. The result of field experimentation revealed that micropropagated tissue culture plantlets recorded higher number of millable cane (89.47 × 103 ha−1) and cane yield (91.0 tha−1) than bud chip settling. With newer crop geometry of 120 cm × 60 cm, tissue culture plantlets planting at 5.0 cm depth was found beneficial in improving cane yield (99.3 tha−1) over rest of planting agro-techniques. As far as bud chip settling is concerned, 120 cm × 60 cm crop geometry and planting at 2.5 cm depth were found most suitable in realizing the higher cane yield (90.7 tha−1).