How can we breed for more water use-efficient sugarcane?

摘要

Selection on the basis of physiological traits is hedged with obstacles in conventional breeding programmes - it is a little-explored concept. However, in this issue of Journal of Experimental Botany (pages 861-872), Jackson et al. present research in which the broad-sense heritability of leaf-and crop-level transpiration efficiency was tested within the framework of Australia's main sugarcane breeding programme.