Traditionally Sugarcane accounts approximately 75% of the world’s sugar and it is economically important cash crop in tropical and sub-tropical regions of many countries. Tissue culture of sugarcane has got a considerable research attention because of its economic importance as a cash crop. In Ethiopia, sugarcane is grown as an important cash and industrial crop. It is not an ideal crop for conventional breeding and it lacks rapid multiplication procedures to commercialize newly released varieties within a short period of time. The research was carried out at Tigray Biotechnology Center Plc, Mekelle, Ethiopia in 2017. The objective of this study, therefore, was to optimizea reproducible micro propagation protocol for SP-70-1284in completely randomized design with factorial treatment combinations arrangements. Using meristem explants and assessing the in vitro multiplication potential of this plant up to the fifth sub-culturing stage on MS medium. BAP with full MS medium was used for culture initiation, the survival percentages of the cultured shoots with healthy morphology was 75.8% in0.5 mg/l BAP +30 g sucrose/l and 5 g agar/l. SP-70-1284 showed the highest number of shoots per explants (34.8 ± 0.837) with 14.04 ± 0.089 average numbers of leaves per shoot and 9.4 ± 0.008 cm shoot length,was obtained after 30 days of sub culturing, in 1 mg/l BAP combined with 0.5 mg/l IBA. The maximum number of roots and the longest root length were 13 ± 0.69 and 4.5 cm in media supplemented with half MS and3.0 mg/l IBA alone. Finally, the rooted shoots were planted on substrate called coco peat; the survival rate of the acclimatized plantlets in the greenhouse was 98.4%. On the other hand the survival rate of field planted well hardened SP-70-1284 plantlets was nearly 96.5%. Therefore, the optimized protocol can be used for rapid micro propagation of SP-70-1284 planting materials for commercializing and large scale production.
