ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the research progress in use of biotechnological tools for sugarcane improvement related to abiotic stress. Tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, nutrient management and improved sugar recovery are some of the concerns to sustain sugarcane production and to improve productivity. Sugarcane in vitro culture began in the 1960s with culture of mature parenchyma of internodal tissues for some physiological studies. The term tissue culture can be applied to any multicellular culture growing on a solid medium that consists of many cells in protoplasmic continuity. Somatic embryogenesis is an important aspect of plant tissue culture where somatic embryos do arise in culture usually from single cells and ontogeny of somatic embryogenesis is comparable with zygotic embryogenesis. 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.
