Resumo:

Brazil is the major sugarcane producer worldwide with an estimated production around 571 Mt of cane (Conab-MAPA). Such leadership was possible due to the incorporation of management technologies and mainly by the utilization of improved cultivars developed by sugarcane breeding programs. The raising demand for ethanol as a source of renewable energy, along with the need to ensure Brazilian’s competitiveness, mainly about ethanol production facing international market and consequently its leadership on bioenergy, brings a series of new challenges especially for genetic breeding programs. In doing so, besides an increase in productivity, it will be necessary to develop new sugarcane cultivars with a new agroenergetic profile, aiming at biomass production for cellulosic ethanol production. Developing a new sugarcane cultivar takes about 10 to 15 years. Thus, crossings currently performed will provide cultivars that must be able to answer to the predicted needs for sugar-alcohol sector within at least 10 years. Thus, due to the objected scenarios, it is of fundamentally importance that parental genotypes to be used on further crossings have the genes of interest for breeders, in such a way that they can be incorporated on new cultivars. In turn, genetic breeding aiming to develop cultivars with a higher biomass production will demand appropriated germplasm as a source of genes that confer traits capable of contributing to an increase on biomass and fiber content, as well as other major agronomic traits such as resistance to main diseases, pests and abiotic stresses.