AMRITSAR: A seminar on 'Traditional and Non-Traditional Approaches to Sugarcane Improvement' was organized at Khalsa College. The main objective of the deliberations was to make the students and faculty aware about the new research and attempts for improving the sugarcane crop with the use of traditional and biotechnological techniques for high yields.
Director-cum-Principal and Sugarcane breeder from Punjab Agriculture University’s Regional Research Center, Kapurthala, Dr. Gulzar Singh Sanghera was the Chief Guest while Cane Commissioner, Punjab), Rajesh Kumar Raheja, Assistant Cane Commissioner Punjab and S. S. Bajwa were the special guest. They were welcomed by Principal Dr. Mehal; Singh. Before the seminar, the experts met Honorary Secretary of Khalsa College Governing Council Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina and discussed the production, qualities and problems of sugarcane.
They stressed on sugarcane, early ripening, resistance to lodging, resistance to stressful environments, disease resistance, insect resistance and juice quality components. They also said that this system has been adopted to improve sugarcane quality and production and isolate yield, sugar recovery, disease resistance, drought tolerance and maturity.
Dr. Sanghera said that inter-specific hybridization resulted in high polyploidy and aneuploidy in modern sugarcane varieties. The estimated genome size of sugarcane is 10 g. B. P. occurs, in which up to 10-12 allelic forms of genes are present. He said that the estimated monoploid genome size is around 800-900 Mm. B. is, which depends on several types of levels.
The Drought-tolerant sugarcane varieties can withstand water stress up to 36 days and yield significantly higher than the control variety BL-19 under drought stress, he said.
They also gave a detailed information to the students while addressing the price, development and difficulties of sugarcane. On this occasion, the said experts visited the bio control lab, headed by Rajinder Pal Singh of the College. Head of Department Dr. Randeep Kaur Bal, Gurpreet Singh Gill, Gurbakhsh Singh, Prof. Satnam Singh, Loveleen Kaur besides the staff, a large number of students were present.