ABSTRACT
Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is an important economic crop mostly used for sugar and biofuel production. Sugarcane cultivators have largely benefited from the conventional breeding methods. However, the complex genome of sugarcane and long duration required to develop elite cultivars of sugarcane have posed limitations in the genetic improvement of this crop. In the past two decades, biotechnological tools have greatly contributed to the genetic improvement of sugarcane, mainly for the development of disease-resistant and stress-tolerant cultivars and improved sucrose accumulation. This chapter primarily focuses on the advancements in sugarcane biotechnology, particularly in the areas of molecular markers, mutation breeding, genetic engineering, genomics, and transcriptomics that have helped in devising new strategies for sugarcane improvement. Genome editing is a newly developed biotechnological tool that has revolutionized the area of crop improvement. The progress made in sugarcane genome editing and the application of genome editing in sugarcane are discussed in this chapter.
