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Title: WATER TABLE AND SUGARCANE: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH

Author
item Glaz, Barry
item Edme, Serge
item Morris, Dolen
item Comstock, Jack
item GILBERT, ROBERT - UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Submitted to: Sugar Journal
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/17/2004
Publication Date: 6/17/2004
Citation: Glaz, B.S., Edme, S.J., Morris, D.R., Comstock, J.C., Gilbert, R.A. 2004. Water table and sugarcane: a review of recent research. Sugar Journal. Vol. 67(1):16

Interpretive Summary: Abstract only for presentation at the Thirty-Fourth Annual Joint Meeting of the American Society of Sugar Cane Technologists.

Technical Abstract: Sugarcane (Saccharum Spp.) in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) of Florida is intermittently exposed to high water tables and floods. This presentation reviews recent investigations of sugarcane genotypic, morphological, physiological, pathological, and agronomic responses to water table and flood. In field tests, CP 72-2086 and CP 82-1172 had no yield losses, whereas CP 80-1743 had sugar losses of 25% due to high water table. In a second field experiment, CP 72-2086 formed significantly more constitutive aerenchyma than CP 80-1743. In lysimeters, photosynthesis was not affected by 1-week floods and yields of one genotype (CP 95-1429), with constitutive aerenchyma, were not affected by water-table depth or floods. Yields of a genotype (CP 95-1376) without constitutive aerenchyma declined linearly with water-table depth, and by 0.6% per day of flood. In a summer experiment conducted in containers with young plants, stalk and root weights were reduced by 3.2 and 3.6%, respectively, per day of flood; in an autumn experiment, they were reduced by 1.0 and 1.1%, respectively, per day of flood. In pots, sugar weight was decreased by 7.2% by a 21-day flood initiated 42 days before harvest. In lysimeters, sugar weight increased by 25.6% with a 20-day flood initiated 41 days prior to harvest. Four pot studies identified no consistent relationship between flood-drain regimes and effect of ratoon stunting disease on sugarcane yields. Maximum sugarcane emergence occurred at a water-table depth of 25 cm in a pot study. Areas of future work include attempts to use: (1) photosynthesis measurements to identify water-table effects, (2) molecular markers for genotype emergence and aerenchyma formation, and (3) economic and agronomic studies to quantify costs/benefits of management options that include compensation for ecological benefits.