ABSTRACT
Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.), a large, strong-growing grass (Poaceae) species, is the most important plant basis for sugar and ethanol production. This sweet and boozing grass is cultivated in more than 80 countries in tropical and subtropical areas, including the Fiji Islands. The commercial value of this grass, an important industrial crop worldwide, and its derivatives is increasing each day. Several climatic factors affect the growth and yield of sugarcane. To overcome this climatic stress and to amplify productivity and quality, countries should adopt innovative technologies, such as plant tissue culture, recombinant DNA technology, or genetic engineering and molecular breeding. When compared to other industrial crops, the breeding efforts taken to develop new sugarcane varieties are limited and interbreed with Saccharum sinense and Saccharum barberi. Those complex hybrids from traditional breeding had a lot of constraints, such as poor fertility rate and long breeding cycle, but these can be overcome by molecular breeding. Transgenic technology is used to manipulate the genetic composition of sugarcane to provide tolerance ability to this grass and the ability to recover from climatic stress. Commendable scientific studies have already taken place for increasing the production of sucrose levels in sugarcane. These studies revealed a better understanding of the sugarcane genome, cell biology, and its physiology. Genetic-engineering technologies can still apply in sugarcane for the insertion of new genes, not only for sucrose production but also for biofuel production, which has potential medicinal properties and industrial values. The technological advancement in molecular biology, genetic manipulations, and molecular breeding would play an important role in sugarcane, not only to produce sugar and alcohol, but also to produce other biofuels and shape sugarcane as a new-generation industrial crop.
