NovaCane®: so much more than pain-free seedcane!

What is NovaCane®?

NovaCane® is a technology that has been developed at SASRI and registered as a trademark in 2005. NovaCane® are disease-free and true-to-type sugarcane plants that have been reproduced by means of tissue culture techniques in a laboratory. Tissue culture is a process whereby a whole plant can be produced from a small amount of leaf, stem or root from a parent plant on nutrient medium in a laboratory. The established protocol involves excision of small (0.5-2 mm) shoot tips and provides for the rapid multiplication of virus-free shoots. The shoot multiplication, followed by rooting can take 7-9 months. The plants are then transferred to seedling trays for 3-4 months of hardening-off.  Various quality control techniques are used during the entire process e.g. DNA fingerprinting to confirm variety identity – see figure below.

The SASRI NovaCane® laboratory has limited production capacity, and the primary focus is on propagating newly gazetted N varieties to go to co-operators for field bulking.  To address grower requests for NovaCane® plants for their own farms, SASRI has shared the technology with several commercial tissue culture laboratories. We supply certified starting material, perform fingerprinting and conduct regular audit-visits. Growers wanting to plant NovaCane® plantlets of released N varieties can contact their Extension Specialist for the details of the nearest commercial lab. Orders must be placed 12 months before the planting date.  Please also refer to SASRI Information sheet 1.4.

Advantages of NovaCane® technology

• It enables large-scale production of NovaCane® plants for the release of new N varieties to the industry.
• Faster production of certified seedcane.
• It is used in the SASRI Quarantine facility to meet increasing import, and export requests and allows for safe movement of germplasm.
• It enables storage and conservation of N and imported varieties.
• Key for the multiplication of genetically modified (GM) varieties in the future.

The NovaCane® lab at SASRI which propagates newly released N varieties and provides variety starting material and support to several commercial tissue culture laboratories. The facility has produced close to 1.5 million plantlets since it was established in 2016.