Effects of Billet Planting Rate and Position on Sugarcane Yields in Louisiana

Abstract

The successful implementation of sugarcane billet planting would offer Louisiana producers several potential economic advantages including reduced labor and equipment costs. Two factors that are preventing the adoption of billet planting are the higher seed-cane costs associated with billet planting and lower yields when compared to whole-stalk planting. A study was initiated in 2001 with the cultivar LCP 85-384 at the USDA, ARS Ardoyne Research Farm near Schriever, LA to determine the effects of billet planting rate and billet position within the furrow on cane and sugar yields. Three different planting ratios (3:1, 5:1, and 7:1) and three billet distribution patterns (equal, two lines, and three lines) were compared from plant-cane to the third ratoon crop. Cane yield was not significantly affected by either planting rate or planting position, and there were no interactions with crop year or trial. The main effect of planting rate or position on theoretically recoverable sugar (TRS) was also not significant, but an interaction between trial and planting position (P=0.047) and crop year and planting rate (P=0.067) were significant at P=0.05 and 0.1, respectively. Sugar yield also did not respond to the main effects of either planting rate or position, but did have interactions between trial and planting position (P=0.058) and between crop year and planting rate (P=0.04). When a comparison was made between cane and sugar yields from the 3:1 planting ratio (industry standard for billets) and a 5:1 ratio, no significant differences were noted. This would suggest that billet planting with LCP 85384 can be made economical in Louisiana without negatively influencing cane or sugar yields.

Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record, shown for indexing and research. Copyright remains with the authors or the publisher. Read at the source ↗

The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.