ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the biotechnological developments that are in place and tailored to address important issues related to sugarcane improvement. The major objectives to improve sugarcane crops using conventional and biotechnological techniques include high cane yield potential, early maturity, resistance to lodging, resistance to stress environments, disease resistance, insect resistance and juice quality components. The system is been adopted for improving the quality and production of sugarcane and somaclones for yield, sugar recovery, disease resistance, drought tolerance, and maturity have been isolated. The involvement of MicroRNAs (miRNAs) in abiotic stress has been studied in plants in response to dehydration or sodium chloride by using expression analysis, suggesting stress-specific regulation of expression of miRNA in sugarcane. The drought-tolerant sugarcane varieties can withstand water stress up to 36 days, and under drought stress can yield substantially higher than the control variety BL-19.
