Assessing sugarcane clones' resilience to waterlogging stress and comprehending the physiological and morphological processes

Waterlogging is a significant abiotic stressor that severely hampers sugarcane productionworldwide. To address this issue, experiments were conducted at the Sugarcane Research Station, Cuddalore, (TNAU), during 2022-2023 to evaluate the waterlogging tolerance of sugarcane clones.The experiment followed a factorial completely randomized design (FCRD) with three replications.Treatments included two water levels (control and waterlogging) and thirteen sugarcane clones orvarieties (Co 86032, C 2015 095, G 11035, C 2014 516, C 16338, C 30010, Co 15020, Co 62175, C2015 021, Si 2014 047, CoC 13339, C 2015 006, CoG 7). After 70 days of seedling, plants weresubjected to 20 days of waterlogging. Waterlogging stress significantly reduced total dry matterproduction, soluble protein, stomatal density, leaf area, above-ground fresh and dry weight, shootlength, root length and SPAD values in all sugarcane clones compared to the control. Conversely,the extent of aerenchyma and aerial roots increased. However, CoC 13339, C 16338, C 2014 516and Co 62175 demonstrated superior waterlogging tolerance among the 13 sugarcaneclones/varieties. These sugarcane clones/varieties have more adventitious roots at the base of theirstems, which most likely made it easier for the plants to survive waterlogging.