ABSTRACT
Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is an important cash crop that accounts for 70% of the world's sugar production. However, it is sensitive to drought, which causes severe reduction in cane yield and sugar quality. Conventional breeding in sugarcane is time consuming and laborious. Further, narrow gene pool, high heterozygous genetic architecture, high genomic complexity, rare flowering, low fertility, large genome size, long breeding cycle, and complex environmental interactions hinder the prospect of recombination breeding. Molecular interventions via genomics-assisted breeding, including production of transgenic sugarcane, can be a better alternative. Various sugarcane genomics resources, databases, molecular tools, and recent advances in “omics” facilitate the characterization of genes and pathways involved in drought tolerance, providing the basis for candidate gene identification and allele mining. The availability of sugarcane genome-sequence information, genome-wide molecular markers, and low-cost genotyping platforms can make it possible to routinely apply marker-assisted breeding approaches to improve cane and sugar yield under drought. The genomics-assisted precision breeding can also avoid the problem of linkage drag normally associated with conventional breeding, besides shortcutting the period of breeding in sugarcane. In this pursuit, the author presents a detailed review of current genomic tools and strategies amenable for precision breeding to improve drought tolerance in the crop.
