Profiling of sugar beet genotypes for agronomical, sugar quality and forage traits and their genetic diversity analysis using SSR markers

Earlier studies have well established the cultivation of sugar beet as winter crop in Indian subtropics and indicated its potential in augmentation of the raw material for sugar production with good profitability. A set of sugarbeet genotypes obtained, were therefore, evaluated for their economic traits and sugar yield at two feasible crop durations. Out of 15, three genotypes viz., Kaveri, Shubra and LKC-2010 have performed well and suggested to exploit commercially with crop duration of 210 days. As sucrose content increased in all the genotypes (though per cent increase varied among genotypes) from April to May, it is recommended to harvest sugarbeet in mid May for better returns. Forage quality parameters theoretically indicated the suitability of sugarbeet tops after harvest to use as fodder, further boosting its acceptability along with shorter crop duration and lesser requirement of resources crop inputs as compared to sugarcane, Thus, sugarbeet appears agriculturally feasible, less capital intensive and holds great promise. Molecular characterization of sugarbeet genotypes was done using 14 polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Unique DNA profiles of all the genotypes could be created using a set of six polymorphic SSR markers. The dendrogram depicting the genetic relationships classified the genotypes in two diverse clusters. This SSR marker based diversity would facilitate sugarbeet hybridization programme involving diverse parents.