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The mission of the Sugarcane Breeding and Quantitative Genetics Lab is to enhance the Louisiana Sugarcane Variety Development Program with innovative breeding strategies that can increase genetic gain and aid in producing elite sugarcane cultivars for Louisiana growers.
The Louisiana sugarcane industry currently spans over 540,000 acres in South Louisiana and produces roughly 20% of the U.S. domestic sugar supply. Growers have consistently increased their annual sugar yields through innovations in mechanization, agronomic practices, and improved varieties. Louisiana lies on the northernmost threshold of where sugarcane can be grown for economic profit, making it a unique environment with specific needs. Adapting the crop to the region has been a consistent goal and area of research since the first successful cultivation of sugarcane in Louisiana in the 1750s.
The Louisiana Sugarcane Variety Development Program (LSVDP) is made possible by the Three-Way Agreement of 1926 where a collaboration was formed between the LSU AgCenter, the American Sugar Cane League, and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service. Today, the breeding program still operates under the conduction of these three entities. Parent varieties are used in crossing at the LSU AgCenter Sugar Research Station in St. Gabriel, LA, and the USDA-ARS in Houma, LA, and Canal Point, FL. Once true seedlings from these crosses are planted in the field for evaluation, they will progress through a series of selection trials as elite experimental varieties are identified and advanced. Those that do not perform favorably are eliminated from the selection process. In total, the breeding program lasts 13 years from the initial cross to the potential release of a variety to the commercial industry. Favorable characteristics of varieties include high sugar yield, disease and insect resistance, early sucrose accumulation, cold tolerance, and ratoon ability among other component traits that may influence agronomic performance.
Advanced Multi-Environment Trials and Number of Experimental Varieties:
As industries grow and change, so do their needs in variety development. As the lifeblood of Louisiana sugarcane production, improved varieties have contributed to progress for over 200 years. It is important, however, to continue to adopt breeding strategies and techniques to complement these changing needs. Different environmental or disease pressures may cause certain trait priorities to shift. New technologies emerge as solutions to practical limitations in plant breeding. The SBQG Lab emerged as a program to assess many of these potential solutions, apply them in the breeding program, and improve the pipelines for decades of progress in sugarcane variety development.
The SBQG Lab explores important questions to be answered regarding breeding program optimization in tool development, statistical genetics, predictive breeding, machine learning, genomics, high-throughput phenotyping, genetic gains assessment, experimental design, and the application of high-resolution environmental data. Each of these technologies and techniques aims to optimize the stage of the selection cycle in which they are used. Each application is applied to improve any and all components of the Breeder’s Equation:
