Co 10026 (Upahar) – An Early High Yielding Variety for Peninsular Zone.

Abstract

Co 10026 (Upahar), an early variety developed through hybridization and selection involving two high yielding and high quality parents Co 86010 and Co 86011 at ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI), Coimbatore, evaluated under AII India Coordinated Research Project (Sugarcane) programme and released in 2019 for commercial cultivation in Peninsular zone . The clone was selected from the ground nursery and evaluated in different clonal stages in Pre Zonal Varietal Trial (PZVT) at Ugar Sugar Works,North Karnataka and AICRP trials from 2013-2017 at ICAR-SBI,Coimbatore and other AICRP centres of Peninsular Zone. Under AICRP(S) Co 10026 was evaluated in 16 centres of Peninsular Zone and out of 33 trials conducted across zone, it ranked in top three in 21 trials for cane yield (t/ha), 23 trials for Commercial Cane Sugar (t/ha) and exhibited its superiority for cane and sugar yield over the zonal check CoC 671. This variety recorded cane yield of 109.01 t/ha, sugar yield of 13.85 t/ha, Pol % cane of 13.58 % and juice sucrose of 17.98 % at 300 days across the zone. It showed 11.80 %, 16.78 % and 23.99 % improvement for sugar yield over the best standard CoC 671, Co 85004 and Co 94008 respectively. Co 10026 exhibited 20.15 % improvement over CoC 671 for cane yield and an improvement of 17.87 % and 19.18 % in comparison with the other zonal checks Co 85004 and Co 94008 respectively. This clone surpassed all the entries and three standards for sugar yield and cane yield and emerged as a qualifying entry for sugar yield and cane yield in eight and five locations respectively. Co 10026 was the only qualifying entry in the ratoon trials and is an excellent ratooner with an improvement of 17.97 % for sugar yield and 27.36 % for cane yield in ratoon crop over the standard CoC 671. It recorded 9.86 % and 16.40 % improvement for sugar yield and cane yield respectively over the best standard Co 85004. The clone had recorded a significant improvement of 9.18% and 5.37% over the checks Co 94008 and Co 85004 for sucrose % at 240 days. The clone had an improvement of 3.99 % over the check Co 94008 for sucrose % at 300 days. Co 10026 has the ideal plant characters of very tall, semi erect, medium thick canes and early fast growth with high tillering ability. It is moderately resistant to red rot and tolerant to drought and salinity