Skip to content

Sugarcane bud-chip nursery Photo: Dr Photographer · Pexels License · source ↗

Sugarcane bud-chip nursery and transplanting

Bud-chip nursery technology — raising single-bud chip seedlings in trays and transplanting 35-45 day-old plantlets to the main field instead of planting full setts directly — was developed by ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute Coimbatore and Vasantdada Sugar Institute (VSI) Pune. It cuts seed cane requirement by 75-80% (from 75-80 q/ha for conventional setts to 15-20 q/ha for bud chips), gives uniform plant stand, and allows mills to schedule planting and harvest with much tighter precision.

Principle

A conventional 3-bud sett of 30 cm uses roughly the equivalent of 8-12 tonnes of millable cane per hectare as seed. In bud-chip technology, only the bud and a thin disc of surrounding rind (5-10 g, called a "chip" or "bud") is excised from the cane using a mechanical bud-chipper, leaving the remaining cane available for crushing or jaggery. The chips are treated, raised in plug trays in a controlled nursery, and transplanted as 4-6 leaf seedlings, bypassing the most vulnerable early-shoot-borer-prone period in the field.

Procedure step-by-step

  1. Seed cane selection: choose 8-10 month old healthy cane from a disease-free mother plot; reject internodes from canes with red rot, smut or grassy shoot signs
  2. Bud chipping: use a manual or motorised bud-chipper to extract single-bud chips (4-6 mm thickness, 15-20 mm diameter); discard buds with damaged scales
  3. Fungicide and biocide dip: dip chips in carbendazim 0.1% + chlorpyrifos 0.05% for 10 minutes; air-dry for 30 minutes
  4. Bio-priming: roll dried chips in Trichoderma viride + Azospirillum + Gluconacetobacter + PSB slurry (5 g/L each)
  5. Nursery raising: fill 50- or 98-cavity plug trays with cocopeat-vermicompost-FYM (3:1:1) media; press one chip per cavity with bud side up, cover with media, water gently
  6. Nursery management: keep under 50% shade net or polyhouse; mist-irrigate twice daily; remove shade at 25 DAS; harden 5-7 days before transplant
  7. Field transplant: at 35-45 DAS, when seedlings are 4-6 leaf stage and 25-35 cm tall, transplant to main field at 75-90 cm row x 30-45 cm plant spacing (24,000-30,000 plants per hectare for paired rows)
  8. Field operations: light irrigation at transplant, FYM 25 t/ha basal, full NPK schedule of the cane variety, regular trash mulching

When and where it applies

Bud-chip transplanting is most beneficial under:

  • Heat zones (early planting in Feb-March in subtropical India, Adsali planting in Maharashtra)
  • High value or premium varieties where seed multiplication ratio matters (4-5x for chip vs 1.5x for sett)
  • Drip-fertigated cane (see sugarcane-drip-fertigation) where uniform plant stand is essential
  • Tissue-culture-derived nucleus seed multiplication
  • Early shoot borer hotspots — seedlings pass the most vulnerable shoot stage in the protected nursery

Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka mills run captive bud-chip nurseries; UP and Bihar are scaling up under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture and state cane development programmes.

Limitations

  • Capital cost of nursery shed, trays and chipper (Rs 1.5-3 lakh for a 1-2 hectare nursery) is a barrier for individual smallholder farmers
  • Transplanting is labour-intensive (35-40 labour-days per hectare) compared to sett planting
  • Bud chips desiccate quickly — must be planted within 24-48 hours of cutting unless cold-stored
  • Establishment failures from poor nursery hygiene can wipe out entire batches; mortality 5-10% is normal

See also: Sugarcane crop, Sugarcane ratoon crop, Sugarcane drip fertigation, Sugarcane early shoot borer, Co 0238 sugarcane, Co 86032 sugarcane.

Sources

  1. Bud chip technology for sugarcane. ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore.
  2. Single bud planting. Vasantdada Sugar Institute, Pune.
  3. Bud chip seedling production. ICAR-Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research, Lucknow.