Brazilian researchers find key to sugarcane yield in ScGAI gene

In Brazil, despite international breeding efforts, advanced agronomy and effective management of pests and diseases, sugarcane yields have been static for decades owing to constraints on culm development. The culm’s sugar storage capacity is physically limited, restricting the volume of sucrose and biomass that can be obtained from the crop for sugar and second-generation (2G) ethanol production, according to experts in the area.

Researchers from the University of Campinas’s Biology Institute (IB-UNICAMP), Brazil’s National Bioethanol Science & Technology Laboratory (CTBE), Sugar Research Australia and Germany’s Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), found that the key to surmounting this constraint on sugarcane yield could lie in a gene called ScGAI.

In a study performed during a project linked to BIOEN, the Bioenergy Research Program from FAPESP—São Paulo Research Foundation, Menossi and collaborators discovered that ScGAI is an important regulator of culm development in sugarcane.

By manipulating the activity of this gene in transgenic sugarcane lines developed in Australia, the researchers succeeded in substantially increasing culm volume and changing the allocation of carbon to structural and storage molecules. They have now reported their findings in an article published in Journal of Experimental Botany.