Heterosis in sugarcane

High heterosis over better parent and standard variety for quantitative and juice quality characters in 24 crosses among eight lines and three testers of sugarcane was observed for all the characters, except sucrose content in juice and purity coefficient. Heterosis for stalk weight ranged from -21.3 to 69.6% over better parent and from -11.8 to 57.8% over standard variety. High standard heterosis over variety Co 1148 was observed only in four crosses, viz. Co 7314 X Co 775, Co 7314 X Co 1148, PoJ 2878 X Co 775 and Q 68 X Co 775, because these combinations produced 14 genotypes showing maximum superiority (51.8% for stalk weight and 24.4% for sucrose content) over the standard variety. These combinations can be exploited for heterosis breeding evolving varieties directly from these heterozygous clones.