Breeding for tolerance to biotic stress in sugarcane

Being a long duration crop, sugarcane attracts a large number of insects pests and susceptible to various diseases. Tolerance or resistance to these biotic stresses remains a top priority in any sugarcane variety development pro-gram. Understanding the sources of resistance to biotic stress requires an understanding of sugarcane taxonomy. Various wild varieties are still to be exploited for their resistance characteristics to biotic stresses. Interspecific hybridization is the basis of disease resistance in many sugarcane breeding programs today. In this article we have tried to discuss a brief account of breeding history followed by the development of various strategies to develop resistance to biotic stresses in fu-ture sugarcane varieties. The major problems related to the most worldwide occurring diseases, viz., ratoon stunting, rust, and smut, their history and their elucidation have been discussed in detail. This paper argues about the scope of molecular markers, difficulties in identifying genes, and the progress made in genetic transformation experiments for some diseases and insect resistant traits. We have also talked about some alternatives to current pedigree breeding methods, such as so-phisticated, computerized crossing design methods and population breeding, which seem to be promising for developing re-sistant varieties in future for sustainable sugarcane and sugar production.