Three-chain empowered sugarcane bio-breeding in China

Three-chain empowered sugarcane bio-breeding in China.The Innovation Life 4:100207.Sugarcane accounts for up to 80% of sugar production, yet breeding progress remains constrained by its complex genetic architecture, including allopolyploidy, high heterozygosity and extensive polymorphism.These features prolong breeding cycles and hinder trait pyramiding, limiting the development of breakthrough cultivars.Biobreeding technologies, particu-larly genetic transformation and gene-editing, enable precise improvement of key agronomic traits.Recently, Sugarcane Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATAS-SRC), leveraging the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Crop Breeding (NBLTC), has established a Three-Chain empowered mechanism to accelerate translation from laboratory research to field application.This integrates the Innovation Chain for functional element discovery, the Industry Chain for platform construction and deployment, and the Support Chain for sustained funding and talent development.The resulting "government-industry-academia-research-application" model provides a practical and transferable framework for biobreeding in sugarcane and other crops with complex genomes.