The Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology (CRC SIIB) and the BSES Limited/CSIRO joint venture hope their latest plant breeding efforts lead to the development of ‘Hi-Energy Canes’, which could have the capacity to incorporate advances in biomass and bioenergy production.

CRC SIIB Senior Plant Breeder Philip Jackson said high energy canes could provide exciting new options for the Australian sugarcane industry, which has previously selected large commercial cane varieties based on sugar content.

“We are seeing a big growth in interest around the world in the energy potential of sugarcane fibre, or the renewable energy potential of bagasse and fermentation of the plant’s cellulose,” said Dr Jackson.

“In the not-so-distant future, some sugarcane varieties with high cane yields and high fibre, which in the past would have been discarded, could become very profitable.”

As with the development of any new sugarcane variety or crop, new crop varieties invariably take five to seven years to develop, test and generate sufficient seed for commercial scale activities.

Industry and energy specialists believe that within ten years sugarcane fibre will attract a high value as energy prices rise due to global supply and demand pressures, and the demand for renewable energy sources.

In a recent analysis of the energy potential of sugarcane, the CRC SIIB found sugarcane to be an environmentally sustainable and economically viable alternative to crops being assessed in the United States for biomass and bioenergy.

The CRC SIIB research plans to combine traditional plant breeding with sophisticated DNA analysis to develop the new high preforming energy canes.

CRC SIIB CEO Peter Twine spoke to EcoGeneration about the research project. He explained that when sugarcane was created in the 1920s, there were only a limited number of crosses made so the world’s commercial sugarcanes are based on a very limited amount of ‘genetic diversity’.

“What the CRC project has been able to do,” he said, “is work with some crosses made between commercial sugarcane and some of these earlier parent species, such as the Saccharum spontaneum, to broaden the genetic diversity of traits in the progeny.

“The original crosses were between a high biomass plant and a ‘sweet’ plant - giving rise to the commercial cane. We have simply gone back to look at further crosses in this sort of parental background.”

The research has seen scientists involved in the project combine the best of Australia’s commercial canes with the untapped genes of some wild relatives of sugarcane in China.

Initially, the CRC SIIB made crosses in China from 2003–05 and imported half of the seed into Australia following strict quarantine procedures. The resultant cane is being evaluated in north Queensland, with some new crosses showing high biomass and fibre but lower commercial cane sugar than established varieties.

More recently, some of the new varieties bred from the wild relatives have been crossed with current high-value, smut resistant Australian varieties. The offspring from these crosses could possible be commercially valuable for production of both sugar and energy.

In response to the ever present questions around food versus fuel, Dr Twine explained that the new high energy canes have just as much sugar in them – they simply have a lot more biomass.

“In fact,” he added, “one of the opportunities of sugarcane is that it delivers not just biomass but carbohydrates as well.”

The CRC SIIB is an alliance of Australia’s sugarcane biotechnology expertise. The collaboration consists of a combination of research institutes that include four universities, sugar industry research organisations, the Federal and the Queensland State Governments, as well as commercial partners.