ABSTRACT
Initially, traditional methods, which combine agronomic and morphologic characteristics, were used to characterize the sugarcane germplasm (Stevenson 1965; Skinner et al. 1987). Traditional sugarcane taxonomy divides the genus Saccharum into six species, the four cultivated species S. officinarum L., S. barberi Jesw., S. sinense Roxb., and S. edule Hassk., and the two wild species S. spontaneum L. and S. robustum Brandes and Jeswiet ex Grassl (Naidu and Sreenivasan 1987). These six species along with Narenga Bor, Sclerostachya (Anderss. Ex Hackel) A, Camus, and Erianthus Michx. and Miscanthus Anderss. section Ripidium are known as the “Saccharum Complex” (Mukherjee 1957). However, this classification can be compounded by the influence of the environment on these vegetative characteristics, which can lead to continuous variation and a high degree of plasticity, which often does not reflect the true genetic diversity of the Saccharum spp. germplasm (Lima et al. 2002). Also, recent molecular data disputes this taxonomic division of the genus Saccharum into six species and it has been suggested that only two species are valid, S. officinarum and S. spontaneum, the other species being interspecific hybrids between these two (Irvine 1999; D’Hont et al. 2002; Fig. 3-1). Despite this disagreement, the separation of clones into the various groups or species provides a useful method of classification for the management of the World Collection of sugarcane germplasm located at Canal Point and Miami, Florida and by the Sugarcane Breeding Institute at Cannanore and Coimbatore, India (Brown et al. 2002).
