Cane with sugar

The canes with sugar ( Saccharum ) is a kind of Plante of the family of the Poacée S. It is cultivated for its Tige S, which one extracts from the Sucre. With an annual volume of superior production to 1,3 billion ton S, it is the first crop plant with the world plan. It was until the beginning of the 19th century the only important source of sugar.

Scientific name: Saccharum officinarum L., family of the Poacée S, subfamily of the Panicoideae , tribe of the Andropogoneae .

Description

The cane with sugar is large a herbaceous Graminée tropical with port of Roseau, a height going from 2,5 to 6 meters. The stems, of a diameter from 1,5 to 6 cm, are full (contrary to the majority of the other Graminaceous ones, marrow does not reabsorb). The sheets, alternate, are divided into two opposed files, have a limb of 1 m length approximately on 2 to 10 cm broad. They are ten on the plants in full growth, the lower part of the stem stripping itself as the low sheets are desiccated.

The inflorescence is a final Panicule of fifty centimetres to one meter length. In culture the cane is generally cut before flowering. It is a hardy perennial by its rhizomateuse stock .

Origin and distribution

The plant does not exist any more in a wild state. Its region of origin would be the Archipel of the New Guinea, from where it would have been spread by the man initially in all the islands of the Pacifique and in the Indian Ocean until in Malaysia, or in the Indochinese peninsula . Its diffusion could be related to the expansion of the Austronésiens through the insular Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Various species present in these areas, Saccharum officinarum is that which was domesticated. It was then crossed with the wild species ( Saccharum robustum , Saccharum barberi , Saccharum spontaneum and Saccharum sinense ) to improve its output out of sugar and its resistance to the various climates.

Today, it is cultivated in all the countries tropical or moderated hot of Old and the New World.

Culture

The surface of culture of the cane with sugar extends from 35° of northern latitude to 30° of southern latitude.

The multiplication is done by Bouture S. These cuttings are pieces of 30 centimetres length canes approximately carrying several nodes with buds quite made up.

Harvest intervenes at the end of eleven months after the plantation, before the Floraison.

The canes are cut to the short-nap cloth of the ground, the concentration out of sugar being maximum in the low part of the stem. The upper part is eliminated at once (one can cut cuttings there), as well as the sheets. The stocks emitting of new stems, the one second harvest is possible at the end of one year, even a third, but the sugar content tends to decrease.

Treatment

The collected cane, in the form of sections of stems, is transported in a Sucrerie to be treated. The stems are crushed in a mill and produce a sweetened liquid, the fibrous Vesou, and residue, the Bagasse. The latter is used to make paper, fuel and food for the cattle, even burned for the production of heat and electricity, as with the Réunion and with Maurice.

The Vesou is clarified then concentrated to extract the granulated sugar gross, the Cassonade. This sugar will be then transformed into white sugar in a refinery. The liquid residue, still very sweetened, noirâtre and viscous, are the Mélasse. The latter can be used for the animal feed or, after fermentation which will transform sugar into ethanol (alcohol), distilled to produce a brandy, the Rhum (more exactly tafia) or a Biocarburant.

The Vesou is also distilled after fermentation to obtain the agricultural Rhum, or of pure alcohol being used as fuel with the vehicles (in an increasingly important way to the Brésil).

Manufacture of cane sugar

Sugar that the stems of cane contain is saccharose. This saccharose is one of the products of photosynthesis (luminous energy conversion into chemical energy). The cane accumulates this sugar in its stems like energy reserve. The quantity of saccharose contained in the cane is on average from 12 to 15%. To extract and concentrate this sugar, the cane must be subjected to a treatment which became more and more complex with the years. Today, the process was largely mechanized and makes it possible to obtain a product of a great purity. Here principal operations to extract the cane sugar:

Preparation: initially, the canes are mechanically jagged in order to facilitate crushing.
Extraction: the canes are crushed in mills to extract the juice (vesou) from them. One obtains also the bagasse which is the fibrous residue.
Clarification: the vesou which contains a great number of impurities is purified by sifting, heating and lime addition (liming).
Evaporation: the clear juice is heated at various temperatures in evaporators with reduced pressure. Water is eliminated in the form of vapor and one obtains syrup.
Crystallization: in boilers, the syrup is heated with 55 °C and reduced pressure. It is transformed into pasty mass, the cooked mass which contains sugar crystals and a viscous liquid called liquor-mother.
Malaxation-Treatment by turbine action: the cooked mass is mixed and turbinate in a centrifugal machine in order to separate the crystals from sugar and syrup of sewer. The sugar of first jet is obtained.
First resumption of the sewers: the syrups of sewer are mixed and turbinate to obtain the sugar of second jet again.
Second resumption of the sewers: the syrups of sewer are mixed and turbinate one second time. One obtains the sugar of third jet and the molasses. The sugar of third jet can be remelted to be mixed in first jet.
Drying: the sugar crystals are dried.
Packing: the sugar crystals are finally put in bags. In the producer countries, the brown sugar obtained often is sold and consumed such as it is. To obtain white sugar, the brown sugar must undergo a series of operations of refining in factory.

Method traditional, known as of the Labat father

Introduced in 1654 by exiled Dutch coming from Brazil, the traditional method of manufacture of sugar in the West-Indian dwellings will practically not be modified during nearly two centuries. This method was described with much precision by a Dominican monk, the father Jean-Baptiste Labat, so much so that it bears its name today. In the traditional method, the chain of the operations passes by a succession of six boilers one meter in diameter approximately, each one having a specific name and a function: the juice of cane was initially collected in the Large one, then it passed in the Characteristic where it was clarified, in the Torch where it was reduced first once, then in Syrup and, finally, syrup obtained its cooking in the Battery finished. Once finished cooking, one pours the sugar solution in large vats out of wooden, the “ice buckets”, where it cools and crystallizes. Cooled sugar - or masses cooked - is deposited in bored containers of holes to let run syrup. At the end of four weeks, sugar is purged of all its syrup and loan to be exported. The syrup is collected to be distilled and produce rum.

Economic aspects

More than one hundred country out of 130.000 km 2 in make push. The twenty first collected 1.218 million tons in 2003, that is to say 91% of the total. The largest producers are the Brésil, the India and the China.

NB: the United States and China are also of important sugar beet producers.

The competition of the sugar of Betterave is very strong. Without support of the capacity by subsidies, harvest strongly goes décroire in the next years.

The most important European cane sugar producer is the group French Quartier, whose head office is with Holy-Suzanne, with the Meeting.

History

The cane with sugar is known since prehistory (Neolithic), and would be originating in New Guinea or Indo-China. Its culture gradually extended in the neighbouring islands, then gained the India and the China. The cane sugar extraction is attested in China approximately six centuries before Jesus-Christ. It is the forwarding of Alexandre Large the until the Indus in the neighborhoods of -325 which made known it the first time at Europeans, one finds of it the trace in the writings of Néarque.

It was imported in Persia about the 6th century. As from the 7th century, the Arabs introduced it since the Perse into the whole of the territories which they occupied, in particular with Cyprus, in Crete, and until Spain during the 8th century. The exploitation of these large plantations is carried out by Esclave S, mode of production which will persist until the abolition of slavery. The occident will redécouvrir sugar with the Croisades: the first appearance of the word in French date of the 12th century, at Christian of Troyes and it is borrowed from the Arab . This product remains initially in Europe sold by the Apothicaire S (from where it draws his Latin name Saccharum officinarum ). As from the 13th century the intensification of the Trade, the taste of the luxury and the rise of the new middle-class class in the cities spread its use. They are the Italian commercial towns, Venice and Genoa in first, which is devoted to this profitable trade with the Orient. Sugar is bought there in the counters of Raising but the Italian tradesmen establish also colonies of plantation on the edge of the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean islands.

The catch of Constantinople by Turkish gives a crushing argument to the trade with the Black Sea and the Italian cities then turn worms of other production centres and provisioning: the cane already cultivated in the Mediterranean possessions, Balearic Islands, South of Spain and Portugal is introduced into the New Atlantic Islands recently discovered (Canary islands) then in the conquests of the the Western Indies.

The cane with sugar was introduced into the the Antilles by Christophe Colomb at the time of its second voyage in 1493, where thanks to the favorable climate its culture quickly thrived. This culture which requires an abundant labor fed the traffic of the Esclave S coming from Africa then, once the pronounced Abolition of slavery, the recourse to the Engagisme.

Propagation of the cane, which is done very easily by cuttings, quickly reached all the Central America, in particular Saint-Domingue, Cuba, the Mexico and the Louisiana. All the clones intialement introduced came from the basin the Mediterranean N, but during the XIXe century of new introductions were made since Tahiti and Java. The famous forwarding of Bounty ordered by the Bligh captain in 1787-1789 aimed to pay of Tahiti until the Jamaica of the cutting of cane to sugar and Breadfruit tree.

At the 17th century, the culture of the cane is generalized in the French Colonies. Montesquieu, in Of the spirit of the laws, justifies with sarcastic remark the use of the slaves by: “Sugar would be too expensive, if one did not make cultivate the plant by slaves. ”

The French revolution disturbed the maritime transport of sugar resulting from the cane with the colonies. Then at the beginning of the 19th century, the continental Blocus founded by the Napoleonean empire against the England caused a blaze of the prices. The beet sugar was then developed and competes with since the cane with sugar.

Trades related to the cane with sugar (in a sugar dwelling)

The culture of the cane with sugar required much labor, of agricultural workers. Here some of the listed trades:

; Weeders, cutters and amarreuses: As the names evoke it weeded the fields of cane, the canes crossed at the time of harvest and moored them by heap to facilitate transport to the factory.

; Ti-band' (small bands): They were consisted the children who put of the manure, removed the dry sheets of the canes, walked in front of oxen to guide them, etc

; The commander: He distributes the tasks, directs, supervises and checks work in the fields (it was often a mulatto).

; The geror (often one béké): It is him which made the management of the agricultural properties and which made the decisions.

; Béké: Creole white going down from the families come from the provinces from France to settle in the Antilles with XVIIe and XVIIIe century.

; The treasurer: He holds finances, controls and manages the budget. It is the right-hand man of the geror.

To lead the hand-trucks or plow to oxen, there was:

; The guide: A child (generally) who walked in front of oxen to direct them.

; The driver: It held and pressed on the arms of the plow during the tilling of the fields.

; The aiguillonnor: He went beside oxen armed with a whip or Gaulle provided with a steel pivot and which whipped or pricked the animals to advance them. According to the size of the attachment, there could be two aiguillonneurs.

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