Sugarcane is a commercial crop. The generic name Saccharum was given to sugar cane by Linnaeus in 1753.
Today sugarcane is grown either as a plantation crop with central management or on hundreds of diversified tracts by numerous small growers.
Sugarcane us vegetatively propagated by placing whole stalk sections with three or more nodes horizontally in the soil.
New roots and shots are generated each year from nodal bands. After the first year harvest, regrowth or ratoon crops are harvested annually for several years.
Conventionally, sugar came is grown in three year cycle. A sugar cane crop takes about 18 months to matures.
After cutting the canes, a lot of trash remains in the fields. In In India, some of this is used as a roofing material, while the rest is burnt, usually at night.
After 8-24 moths of sucrose accumulation, stalks are harvested and crushed to extract juice. Juice is boiled and evaporated to produce a thick syrup that is eventually crystallized to form sugar granules.
Among sugar producing plants, sugarcane is responsible for about 60% of world’s sugar production, the remaining 40 percent coming from sugar beet, a temperate zone crop.
Sugarcane farming involves highly capitalized and highly specific investments, especially at the processing levels.
It takes about 12 months for the sugarcane crop to be ready for harvesting an once it has been harvested it has to be processed within 24 hours.
Sugar Cane Farming
