Sugarcane current production worldwide is in the range of 75 tons/ha. We have calculated its theoretical potential to be 380 tons/ha.

We believe that biotechnology can help increase yield in this grass but biotechnological tools adequate for sugarcane are unavailable. Our group, together with other groups in the BIOEN Program is sequencing the sugarcane genome, annotating the genome and producing gene catalogues, developing methods for sugarcane transformation and phenotyping and developing an integrated database with datamining tools for this crop that we believe may help the community that works on sugarcane improvement.

Waclawovsky, A. J., Sato, P. M., Lembke, C. G., Moore, P. H and Souza, G. M. (2010). Sugarcane for Bioenergy Production: an assessment of yield and regulation of sucrose content. Plant Biotechnology Journal 8, 1-14. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7652.2009.00491.x

Hotta, C. T., Lembke, C. G., Ochoa, E. A., Cruz, G. M. Q., Domingues, D. S., Hoshino, A. A., Santos, W. D., Souza, A. P., Crivellari, A., Marconi, T. G., Santos, M. O., Melotto-Passarin, D. M., Mollinari, M., Margarido, G. R. A., Carrer, H., Souza, A. P., Garcia, A. A. F., Buckeridge, M. S., Menossi, M., Van Sluys, M-A. and Souza, G. M. (2010). The biotechnology roadmap for sugarcane improvement. Tropical Plant Biology. 10.1007/s12042-010-9050-5

Costa, M. D-B. L, Hotta, C. T., Carneiro, M. S., Chapola, R. G., Hoffmann, H. P., Garcia, A. A. F., Souza, G. M.  (2011). Sugarcane Improvement: How far can we go? Current Opinion in Biotechnology 23:1–6.