Sugarcane for generating electricity

Panaji, July 16: In a bid to meet the burgeoning demand for electricity, agro-scientists have come out with new hybrids and clones that yield fibre-rich sugarcane with several industrial applications including power generation.

''Sugarcane is emerging as a multi-product crop useful for generating electricity and in the production of ethanol, industrial alcohol and paper from its pulp, apart from manufacturing sugar and providing sugarcane juice,'' say agro-scientists.

Dr N Vijayan Nair, director of Coimbatore-based premier Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI) which is an institute under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), told a visiting UNI correspondent recently that collaborative research with the industry is underway to test the new high-fibre content varieties.

''The new varieties, yielding high biomass with more fibre content in the sugarcane stem, could be used for generating electricity in the sugar mills itself,'' Dr Nair said.

The co-generated power could be used either for internal purpose or sold outside directly or through the state grid to provide additional income for the sugar factories,'' he said.

With certain industries expressing a desire to generate power using bagasse (sugarcane fibre), the scientists have initiated the programme and developed some hybrids from the wild and the cultivated varieties.

The scientists were also developing clones that give more biomass of high-fibre types with industrial application. Testing the clones for suitability in respective industries for specific commercial use has to be undertaken through collaborative research, he added.

At the same time, scientists are engaged in developing ''ratooning'' varieties of sugarcane. The farmers can harvest the crop several times once these varieties are planted. The ratooning varieties save a lot of investments to the farmer on purchase of inputs, leave alone tilling the soil for each crop like with ordinary varieties.

Interestingly, the SBI, the oldest in the world which was set up in 1912 by the British, maintains the world's largest collection of sugarcane germplasm at its Coimbatore and Kannur (Kerala) facilities where it has cryo-preserved over 4000 clones collected from indigenous, wild and 40 other countries. Thirty other countries, including the USA and Australia, have been using these clones as ''parents'' for their sugarcane breeding programmes over the years.

Efforts are also underway to enhance the germplasm collection and preservation as an ongoing process besides conserving them in the Kannur bank. It has also maintained catalogues and databases on germplasm resources, scientists said.

The SBI has collected germplasm of 23 new varieties of sugarcane from Tripura, 53 from Meghalaya and eight from Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Taking advantage of this large pool of genetic material, the SBI scientists are intensifying their research for developing new clones that could be high-yielding, pest and disease resistant and some yielding high biomass and higher sucrose.

The SBI has been credited with developing an array of sugarcane varieties specific to different regions suitable to their agro-climatic conditions. Prominent among these are drought-resistant and salinity-tolerant high yielding variety CO-94008 for peninsular India and higher sugar-rich variety CO-p4012 for Maharashtra.

The Institute is likely to come out with some new varieties next year for release and approval by the Central Sub-Committee on Crop Standards, scientists said.

UNI