Two hypotheses for slow genetic gains in CCS are proposed here. The first is that insufficient selection pressure has been applied for CCS in breeding programs for selection of parents, because of a dominating effect of variation in cane yield. For example, in Australian breeding programs, if selection of clones for use as parents is based on economic value alone, the results in Fig. 3 indicate the dominant effect of cane yield because its high variation. However, an optimal selection index would place a considerably greater weighting on CCS than cane yield because of the higher narrow sense heritability and economic value of CCS. In the BSES breeding program in Australia, an index called net merit grade (NMG) has been used extensively for selection purposes. This index is based on sugar yield with increased emphasis on CCS because of its relative greater economic value.However, this index has not taken account of differences in (broad or narrow sense) heritabilities of cane yield and CCS, or relative effects of competition effects on cane yield and CCS in early stages of selection. For this reason, selection based on NMG would under-weight CCS compared with an index determined to maximise rate of genetic gain.There is evidence that the rate of improvement of parents in sugarcane breeding programs in Australia has been slow for the past 30–40 years for both cane yield and CCS (Rattey et al., 2004). Although ongoing improvement in cultivars is occurring, it would seem that these gains are arising by identifying rare recombinants from crosses from among a slowly or non-improving parent pool. Breeding value for parents of different ages does not exhibit any obvious improvement with time, with the best new parentsnot obviously better as a group than the best old (pre-1970) parents (Rattey et al., 2004). If selection of clones in the past has been based on an index (e.g.economic value), which is strongly influenced by cane yield, which in turn is strongly influenced by nonadditive gene effects, this would contribute to the slow progress observed for both cane yield and CCS. A faster rate of gain for economic value may be achieved through greater selection pressure on parents for CCS compared with cane yield.