Sugar partitioning in sprouting lateral bud and shoot development of sugarcane

Sugarcane is a leading energy crop of the world due to its ability to capitulate high sucrose. To understand the mechanism associated with shoot establishment from the lateral bud of sugarcane setts, at the time of germination, we established shoots and these shoots were incubated in total darkness and dark/light regime. The concentration of sugars (sucrose and hexoses) and activities of sugar metabolizing enzymes were measured from 0 to 21 days with 7 days intervals during shoot establishment using sugarcane cultivar CoS 97264. A decrease in sucrose concentration and increase in hexoses level was observed in intermodal tissues whereas in the shoots, the level of both sucrose and hexoses increased continuously during shoot establishment. During 0–21 days shooting period, the dry mass of internodes declined by 20 and 25% in plants incubated in dark/light and darkness respectively. All invertases, soluble acid invertase, neutral invertase and cell wall bound invertase were expressed with almost similar pattern in both the intermodal tissues and the shoots. The activity of enzyme sucrose synthase, measured within first 10 days of shooting in both types of tissues, appeared to be higher particularly in sugar breakdown direction. In the shoots, slight increase in sucrose synthase activity in sucrose synthesis direction was observed throughout shooting period in the shoots. The results suggest that sucrose is the main substrate used during shoot establishment and that shoot establishment period is characterized by increased activities of invertases and sucrose synthase and increased level of hexoses in the shoots.

► Shoots were established from the lateral bud of sugarcane setts.
► These shoots treated with total darkness and dark/light regime.
► The observations were taken from zero to 21 days with 7 days.
► The sugars and sugar metabolizing enzymes activities were measured.
► Sugar metabolizing enzyme expressed differentially with varying amount of sugars.