Research and Development Priorities for Sugar Industry of China: Recent Research Highlights

The major purpose of sugarcane production is for sugar in China. The major limits for sugar productivity include abiotic and biotic factors. Drought is the most important abiotic limit while smut and borer are the most important biotic constraints. In practice, high nitrogen fertilizer input causes high production cost and agricultural environment pollution, which also has been paid high attention to research and development priorities for sugar industry of China include breeding highly productive, high sugar, strongly resistant and nitrogen efficient sugarcane cultivars by conventional and biotechnological approaches, developing low cost and efficient cultivation technologies for sugarcane production, crossing parents innovation by utilizing wild germplasm. Whole sugarcane genome sequencing, proteome analysis and biological nitrogen fixation research are also under way.