Growth and Maturation of Sugarcane SP80-3280 in Two Different Seasons

Sugarcane has a unique characteristic among crop plants in the world: the ability to accumulate high levels of sucrose in its stems. Until today it is not completely known how environmental stimuli and genetic programming interact and regulate the molecular mechanisms that determine the agronomic characteristics of sugarcane. To understand sugarcane development and maturation, sugarcane cultivar SP80-3280 was planted in two different seasons in an experimental field. After 4, 8, 11 and 13 months of development, physiological, morphological and biochemical parameters were measured. We observed that sugarcane plants planted in the dry season were smaller than plants planted in the rainy season after 4 months of development. Despite the increased rainfall after 8 months of development, the plants were still smaller and had a smaller Brix content than plants planted in the rainy season. Brix content from plants from both fields was similar only after 13 months of development. This means that if sugarcane is planted in a dry season an increase in precipitation in subsequent months is not sufficient to rapidly increase sugar content. Samples will be analyzed using system-wide and high-throughput techniques to strength the sugarcane Systems Biology by integrating transcriptome, proteome and metabolome information. Transcript expression of leaves +1 from the dry season was evaluated in Agilent custom oligoarrays. We identified 142, 78, 74 and 141 genes differentially expressed in 4, 8, 11 and 13-month–old plants, respectively. 403 different antisense transcripts were also expressed in all stages of development.