Field Crop 2025, Vol.8, No.3, 102-112 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/fc 102 Review and Progress Open Access The Breeding of Elite Fresh Sugarcane Varieties: Comprehensive Evaluation of Flavor, Disease Resistance, and Market Adaptability Dandan Huang1, Kaiwen Liang 2 1 Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China 2 Comprehensive Utilization Center, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572000, Hainan, China Corresponding email: kaiwen.liang@hitar.org Field Crop, 2025, Vol.8, No.3 doi: 10.5376/fc.2025.08.0011 Received: 03 Mar., 2025 Accepted: 14 Apr., 2025 Published: 02 May, 2025 Copyright © 2025 Huang and Liang, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Huang D.D., and Liang K.W., 2025, The breeding of elite fresh sugarcane varieties: comprehensive evaluation of flavor, disease resistance, and market adaptability, Field Crop, 8(3): 102-112 (doi: 10.5376/fc.2025.08.0011) Abstract This study takes fresh sugarcane as the object, comprehensively reviews the research progress in recent years in the aspects of flavor quality evaluation and improvement, disease resistance gene mining and utilization, market adaptability evaluation system construction, and multi-target breeding strategies, and analyzes its flavor, disease resistance and adaptability characteristics through typical excellent varieties. The results show that the flavor of fresh sugarcane is determined by high sugar content (mainly sucrose, fructose and glucose in sugarcane juice) and a variety of aromatic volatiles. Sensory evaluation can be combined with quantitative descriptive analysis and consumer preference testing for improvement and selection; key QTLs and genes affecting disease resistance have been identified through molecular markers and multi-omics methods, providing tools for genetic improvement; a comprehensive evaluation system based on multi-environment experiments (combining indicators such as yield, sugar, and stress resistance) can screen out strains with high stability and wide adaptability. At the same time, modern molecular breeding technologies (such as whole genome selection and gene editing) are accelerating the process of multi-target aggregation breeding. This study also puts forward suggestions such as strengthening germplasm innovation, multi-trait molecular marker-assisted selection, genome editing-directed improvement, and precise evaluation of ecological niches, in order to promote new breakthroughs in the breeding of excellent fresh sugarcane varieties. Keywords Fresh sugarcane; Flavor quality; Disease-resistant breeding; Market adaptability; Multi-trait breeding 1 Introduction Fresh sugarcane (Saccharum officinarumL., fruit cane) is not only an important energy and sugar raw material crop, but also one of the fruit crops that are deeply loved by consumers. According to statistics, more than 120 countries in the world grow sugarcane, with an annual output of more than 2 billion tons. In some countries, fresh sugarcane accounts for a significant proportion. For example, in Nigeria, about 70% of sugarcane is used for raw consumption rather than sugar production. Asian countries such as China and India also have a tradition of planting and consuming a large amount of fresh sugarcane. However, fresh sugarcane breeding has long been subject to many limitations. Modern sugarcane is a high-ploid hybrid bred by distant hybridization of multiple species of the genus Saccharum. The genome is highly complex and heterologous. About 80% of the genome comes from cultivated sugarcane, 10%~20% comes from wild sugarcane, and the rest is recombinant fragments (Pompidor et al., 2021; Healey et al., 2024). The high polyploidy and high heterozygosity of the sugarcane genome pose great challenges to gene localization cloning and precise improvement (Li et al., 2023). Although the reference genome sequences of wild sugarcane and some cultivated sugarcane have been released in recent years, the whole genome analysis of modern sugarcane hybrids is still insufficient. The breeding cycle of fresh sugarcane is long and the screening cost is high. Traditional hybrid breeding uses the "five-generation method" and other methods, and it takes more than 10 years of continuous screening and identification in different fields and environments to launch new varieties. The breeding goals of fresh sugarcane are multidimensional, requiring not only economic traits such as high stem yield and high sugar content, but also excellent flavor and taste and strong disease resistance and stress resistance to meet the dual needs of consumers and growers. However, multi-objective aggregation often has negative correlation and trade-offs between traits,
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