Artificial intelligence in sugarcane breeding: A comprehensive review of applications, tools, and future prospects

Abstract

Sugarcane is a high-value industrial crop vital for sugar and biofuel production, yet increasingly constrained by climate variability, biotic and abiotic stresses, soil degradation, and inefficient input use. Traditional breeding and crop management approaches are often slow, labour-intensive, and less precise, emphasizing the need for digital transformation in sugarcane agriculture. AI now offers powerful tools to accelerate genetic improvement, enhance stress resilience, and optimize resource-use efficiency. This review synthesizes recent advances in AI applications across the sugarcane improvement pipeline, including high-throughput phenotyping, genomic prediction, digital crop monitoring, and AI-driven decision-support systems. ML and DL models enable automated, accurate prediction of key traits such as biomass, canopy temperature, nitrogen status, and sugar recovery using UAV, satellite, and proximal sensing data. AI-powered genomic selection approaches leveraging convolutional networks, transformers, and attention mechanisms improve prediction accuracy for yield, ratooning ability, and stress tolerance by integrating SNPs, pedigree, and multi-environment datasets. Emerging innovations such as digital twins, multimodal data fusion, reinforcement learning-based irrigation scheduling, and climate-smart advisory models further strengthen real-time crop intelligence. The integration of blockchain-enabled breeding databases, FAIR data standards, and interoperable analytics pipelines supports scalable and collaborative research. Literature analysis reveals 15-30% gains in selection efficiency, >90% accuracy in disease detection, and phenotyping cost reductions of up to 70%. Key challenges remain, including scarce annotated datasets, genotype × environment complexity, model interpretability, and adoption barriers for smallholders. A future roadmap is proposed featuring multimodal foundation models, edge-AI deployment, and explainable breeder dashboards. AI is redefining sugarcane research from reactive to predictive, enabling climate-resilient, sustainable, and profitable production systems.

Plant phenotyping relevance

サトウキビ育種におけるAI応用の総説であり、高スループット表現型解析、UAV・衛星・近接センシングによる形質推定を主要な対象として扱っているため、フェノタイピング手法レビューとして適格。

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