Sugar cane (sugercane)

Sugarcane, or sugar cane, is one (Saccharum officinarum) of the several species of tall perennial true grasses of the genus Saccharum, tribe Andropogoneae, native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia and Melanesia, and used for sugar production. It has stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in the sugar sucrose, which accumulates in the stalk internodes. The plant is 2 to 6 m (6 ft 7 in to 19 ft 8 in) tall. All sugar cane species interbreed and the major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids. Sugarcane belongs to the grass family Poaceae, an economically important seed plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum, and many forage crops.

Sucrose, extracted and purified in specialized mill factories, is used as raw material in human food industries or is fermented to produce ethanol.

Sugarcane is a tropical, perennial grass that forms lateral shoots at the base to produce multiple stems, typically three to four m (10 to 13 ft) high and about 5 cm (2 in) in diameter. The stems grow into cane stalk, which when mature constitutes around 75% of the entire plant.

A mature stalk is typically composed of 11–16% fiber, 12–16% soluble sugars, 2–3% non-sugars, and 63–73% water. A sugarcane crop is sensitive to the climate, soil type, irrigation, fertilizers, insects, disease control, varieties, and the harvest period. The average yield of cane stalk is 60–70 tonnes per hectare (24–28 long ton/acre; 27–31 short ton/acre) per year. However, this figure can vary between 30 and 180 tonnes per hectare depending on knowledge and crop management approach used in sugarcane cultivation. Sugarcane is a cash crop, but it is also used as livestock fodder. Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia.

Different species likely originated in different locations, with “Saccharum barberi” originating in India and S. edule and S.officinarum in New Guinea.[8] It is theorized that sugarcane was first domesticated as a crop in New Guinea around 6000 BC.New Guinean farmers and other early cultivators of sugarcane chewed the plant for its sweet juice. Sugarcane cultivation requires a tropical or temperate climate, with a minimum of 60 cm (24 in) of annual moisture. It is one of the most efficient photo-synthesizers in the plant kingdom. It is a C4 plant, able to convert up to 1% of incident solar energy into biomass.[19] In prime growing regions, such as Mauritius, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, India, Guyana, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Australia, Ecuador, Cuba, the Philippines, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Hawaii, sugarcane crops can produce over 15 kg/m2 of cane. Once a major crop of the southeastern region of the United States, sugarcane cultivation has declined there in recent decades, and is now primarily confined to Florida and Louisiana.

Traditionally, sugarcane processing requires two stages. Mills extract raw sugar from freshly harvested cane and "mill-white” sugar is sometimes produced immediately after the first stage at sugar-extraction mills, intended for local consumption. Sugar crystals appear naturally in white color during the crystallization process. Sulfur dioxide is added to inhibit the formation of color-inducing molecules as well as to stabilize the sugar juices during evaporation. Refineries, often located nearer to consumers in North America, Europe, and Japan, then produce refined white sugar, which is 99 percent sucrose. These two stages are slowly merging. Increasing affluence in the sugar-producing tropics increased demand for refined sugar products, driving a trend toward combined milling and refining.