Early Growth, Yield and Quality of Sugarcane as Affected by Number of Buds per Sett at Wonji/Shoa Sugar Estate

Abstract

Owing to the high cost associated with planting, planting materials deserves attention in a sugar industry thriving to be competitive in the world market and also to enhance profitability. Accordingly, an experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications to determine the effect of number of buds per sett (one bud, two buds (control), three buds, four buds, randomly chopped setts (containing variable buds per sett) and whole stalks) on the early growth, yield and quality of two sugarcane varieties (NCo334 and B52/298) at Wonji/Shoa Sugar Estates on the plant and first ratoon crops. The analysis of variance indicated that sprouting was significantly (p<0.05) affected by the main effects of variety and type of planting material. Number of tillers and millable canes were affected by the main effect of variety and the interaction of variety with the type of planting materials in the plantcane, however, none of the main effects and their interaction had significant effect in the first ratoon crop. Cane yield was not affected by the main effects or their interaction in both the plant and first ratoon crops. Similarly, sucrose percent cane and estimated sugar yield in the plant crop were not affected by the main effects and their interaction, however, in the first ratoon crop the main effect of the variety were found to be significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference among the type of planting materials utilized in this study