Abstract

In Ethiopia, sugarcane is grown as an important cash and industrial crop. It is not an ideal crop for conventional breeding and it lacks rapid multiplication procedures to commercialize newly released varieties within a short period of time. Hence, the objective of this work was to optimize the optimum concentration of 6-benzylaminopurine (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 mgL^-1) and Kinetin (0.0, 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 mgL^-1) combination for shoot multiplication of C86-12 and C86-56 genotypes in completely randomized design with 5x4x2 factorial treatment combinations arrangements. The analysis of variance showed that the interaction effects of BAP, kinetin and genotypes on the number of shoots per explant, number of leaves per shoot and average shoot length were highly significant (p<0.001). Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 1.5 mgL^-1 BAP and 0.5 mgL^-1 of Kin for B86-12; and 1.5 mgL^-1 of BAP and 1.0 mgL^-1 of Kin for C86-56 were found to be the optimum media for shoot multiplication. B86-12 showed 33.8 ± 0.837 number of shoots per explant with 13.04 ± 0.089 average number of leaves per shoot and 8.4 ± 0.008 cm shoot length whereas C86-56; 25.6 ± 0.548 number of shoots per explant with average number of leaves per shoot of 9.8 ± 0.447 and shoot length 8.65 ± 0.72 cm was obtained after 30 days of sub culturing. Thus, the optimized protocol can be used for rapid multiplication of the planting materials

Keywords: Sugarcane; BAP; Kinetin; Shoot multiplication