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Plant Science Today (PST)

Research Articles

Vol. 12 No. sp3 (2025): Advances in Plant Health Improvement for Sustainable Agriculture

Effect of co-occurrence of high night temperature and low moisture stress in sugarcane

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.8274
Submitted
14 March 2025
Published
03-12-2025

Abstract

Sugarcane is an important crop, essential for sugar and bioenergy and makes a substantial contribution to India’s Gross Domestic Product. Global warming and climate change result in increased frequency and intensity of combined water deficit and high temperature stress episodes, which ultimately limits worldwide sugarcane productivity. In reality, global night temperatures are rising more rapidly than daytime temperatures, demonstrating the sensitivity of plants to warmer nights. From 1991 to 2024, which covers a period of 34 years, the night temperature of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu during March (R2 = 0.402) and April (R2 = 0.232) showed significantly increasing trend, notably, there has been a significant rise since the beginning of the 21st century. During an investigation (January-December 2024) to study the responses of sugarcane variety Co 86032 to drought stress during formative phase, an episode of high night temperature was observed during March and April (25.48 °C and 27.90 °C, respectively), which was significantly higher than the night temperature observed during the past 34 years (21.26 °C and 23.37 °C, respectively). This episode of combined high night temperature along with water deficit condition caused drying of leaves starting from the tips and later spreading to the entire leaf lamina. Membrane stability, photosynthetic pigments and proline content were significantly suppressed, whereas alterations in leaf water status resulted in higher canopy temperature under stress. Although the crop recovered during the grand growth phase due to the southwest monsoon (June-September 2024), the number of millable canes, cane weight and juice weight showed significant reduction of 52.0 %, 51.9 % and 21.0 %, as compared to irrigated control. However, the biochemical parameters viz., total soluble sugars (Brix %) and sucrose content in juice (Pol %) did not show significant variation due to stress. Increment in the global night temperature indicated through historical data analysis, along with the present experimental results, revealed an important concern for the scientific community to study in detail the magnitude of high night temperature. It is also crucial to identify suitable physiological traits for combating climate change, thus paving the way for climate resilient sugarcane production.

 

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