7 EVALUATION OF SOME SUGARCANE CLONES AT FAISALABAD Muhammad Ashfaq Nadeem*, Muhammad Aleem Sarwar*, Fayyaz Ahmad*, Faqir Hussain*, Abdul Ghaffar* and Arshad Ali Chattha* * Sugarcane Research Institute, AARI, Faisalabad. ABSTRACT A field experiment was planned with the objective to evaluate performance of ten sugarcane clones namely S2002US-234, S2002US-312, S2002US-447, S2002US-452, S2002US-463, S2002US-628, S2002US-635, S2002US-747, SPF-213 (standard) and HSF-240 (standard) under semi arid climatic conditions of Faisalabad. Statistically significant results showed that clone S2002US-312 crossed all its counter parts, including standards, by producing maximum cane yield (101.77 t/ha), CCS (13.84%) and sugar yield (14.08 t/ha). The remaining clones recorded significant and variable results with respect to germination, tillering, number of millable canes, cane yield and sugar yield. Key words: Sugarcane, clones, CCS, sugar yield, cane yield. INTRODUCTION Sugarcane is an important cash crop and plays a vital role in the country‟s economy. Millions of people are engaged in sugarcane production, industrial processing and trade (Bashir et al., 2005). In Pakistan, a slight increase in cane yield (0.69%) has been recorded its annual yield was 48887 Kgs/ha during 2004-05 which increased up to 49229 kgs/ha in 2005-06 (GOP, 2006). However this small increase is not enough to meet the nation‟s sugar demand. Low cane yield may be due to poor management, low seed rate, poor quality seed, and low yielding varieties both in tonnage and quality limit production to a considerable extent (Ahmad, 1998). Low rate of sugarcane productivity and sucrose recovery can be attributed to low yielding varieties (Afghan et al., 1994). Sugarcane varieties show great variation in expression of genotypic and phenotypic characters in various sets of ecological conditions (Malik et al., 1993). Unawareness of farmers in adaptation of varieties is also the prime cause of low cane yield (Jamro et al., 2000). So there is a dire need to evaluate high yielding varieties with the course of time. The studies made in the past regarding the topic is given below. Aslam et al., (1998) recommended a new cane variety SPF-234 for cultivation in southern Punjab of Pakistan after comparing nine clones in that region. SPF-234 germination (38.48%), tillers per plant (3.32), cane weight (1.25 kg) cane stand (111296 canes/ha), cane yield (139.43 t/ha) and sugar yield (14.06 t/ha). Singh et al., (1992) compared different agronomic characteristics of twelve promising sugarcane varieties under rainfed conditions and found Cos 8118 and B091 best as it produced 78.2 and 73.9 t/ha millable tillers respectively. Ricaud and Domaigue (1991) studied the performance of some newly introduced and standard commercial cultivars in Mauritius and recommended cv. M1658/78 as the excellent variety because of its higher yield and sucrose contents as well as its wide adaptation to different soils and climatic regions of island. Rehman et al., (1989) studied qualitative and quantitative characteristics of eleven sugarcane varieties and declared BF-162 as the best in cane and sugar yield over the other varieties compared. Alvarez et al., (1989) recommended five varieties namely IAC-58/243, IAC-69/307, IAC-363, IAC-68/245 and IAC-69/426 among twenty five varieties studied by him.