A one day National Conference was held on Prospects, Challenges and Strategies to Maximize Sugarcane Production, at University of Agriculture, Faisalabad on April 8, 2014. Experts from teaching, research, extension, representatives of sugar industry, along with a large number of growers participated in the conference. Live discussions and farmers warm participation in highlighting their viewpoint made the conference a fruitful event. A number of presentations were made during the day. Following recommendations were made by the consensus of the experts and the farmers for enhancing the productivity of sugarcane:
- Evolution of site specific sugarcane varieties by using conventional and biotechnological breeding approaches with focus on developing transgenic lines with desirable traits for salinity, drought, frost tolerance, and herbicide resistance, and better ratooning ability.
- Development of varieties with morphological traits that made them easy to handle for removing trash.
- Establishment of a sugarcane breeding station for true seed production.
- Development of site specific sugarcane production technologies with emphasis on resource conservation technologies for sustainable cane production and dissemination of technology to farmers door step.
- Efforts need to be made for mechanization of sugarcane production through developing specific cost-effective machinery.
- Propagating newly developed sugarcane varieties through their multiplication at sugarcane seed farms, supplying the seed to the mills and to progressive growers.
- There should be rationale for allocation of budget for varietal and cane development.
- R&D, policy, outreach and technology issues should be addressed by the experts keeping in view the farmer’s resources, market demand, and fluctuations in international market through an impact analysis for short and long term periods
- Marketing issue need to be handled properly. There is dire need to eliminate political interference in regulation of mills.
- Strict price equivalence should be developed so that farmers get a proper price based upon sugar recovery.
- A uniform sugar recovery formula need to be developed that is reached through consensus between the technical experts in research, industry and the growers, and that holds true during different periods of crop season.
- Mills should be operational when base recovery (for pricing) is achieved in the cane.
- There should be a rational for distribution of profit between the growers and the industry.
- Adjustment of sugar prices while taking into account the income generated from by-products of sugarcane.
- Practical sugarcane growers should be made members of the Sugarcane R&D Board.
- A mechanism should be developed to control the cultivation of un-approved sugarcane varieties.
- Redefining of cropping zones for sugarcane on the basis of climate, soil and plant characteristics to tackle the impact of climate change on sugarcane production
- There is dire need to generate missing information on nutrient use in sugarcane by focusing on soil minerology, K dynamics, real deficiency limits based on soil-test-plant-response correlations for economical crop production.
- Possibility should be explored for introduction of new sugar crops.
- Research and development on proper utilization of by-products (molasses, bagasse etc.) for various purposes including generation of energy should be explored
