STUDIES IN INDIAN SUGARCANE, No. 2, 



SUGARCANE SEEDLINGS, INCLUDING SOME CORRELATIONS 

 BETWEEN MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS 

 AND SUCROSE IN THE JUICE. 



BY 



C. A. BARBER, Sc. D. (Cantab.) 

 Government Sugarcane Eaypert, Madras. 



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Introduction. 



O-NTE of the most striking featnres in any batch of yonng seedlings, raised 

 from common parents, is the variation among them in small particulars. This 

 is true of cane seedlings as well as of other plants (PL I). They differ in 

 size and shape, width of leaf and thickness of stem, colour marks in various 

 yiarts and habit in general. As to the latter, the seedlings may vary from 

 upright bushes to oblique, sprawling or prostrate. The tips of their leaves 

 may be strict, erect, rapier, or bayonet-like in their rigidity, sharply bent or 

 (curving broadly and gracefully. The colour of their stems may be yellow, 

 green, or white, tinged with pink, purple, red or claret, striped in various 

 ways, shiningly smooth or thickly coated with white waxy bloom. The leaf- 

 sheaths are less easy to describe, but here, too, we find all variations in colour 

 betwe(ui light green and dark chocolate purple, through various stages of reds 

 and blues. 



We now know, from the chemical analysis of these seedlings at harvest, 

 that their juice also varies extraordinarily in the quantity of sugar that it 

 contains. This is in keeping with the fact, noted in other cultivated plants, 

 that seedlings tend to vary most in the character for which they have been 

 selected. And the temptation is irresistible to try and correlate the various 

 infantile characters mentioned above with the richness of the juice of the 

 mature plant at crop time. Such an endeavour is, however, fraught with 



