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Stress on developing new sugarcane varieties
DISCUSSING THE importance of varied development of sugarcane, director UP Council of Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur Dr SB Singh laid emphasis on need for continuous development of new varieties of sugarcane.
DISCUSSING THE importance of varied development of sugarcane, director UP Council of Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur Dr SB Singh laid emphasis on need for continuous development of new varieties of sugarcane.
He was delivering a lecture on “Development of sugarcane varieties for higher sugar recovery” at the National Sugarcane Institute (NSI), here on Thursday.
Dr Singh said that efforts should be made to ensure the new sugarcane varieties contain more sugar and less fibre. He added that stems should be thick and the plant resistant to attack from cork and shoot borers.
Dr Singh said that there was a need to develop early and mid-maturing varieties. He said that NSI along with Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore was engaged in developing new varieties. He added that many of these had been given to the farmers and sugar factories were reporting good recoveries.
President, LH Group of sugar factories, Delhi BP Dixit delivered a lecture on “Measures for improvement of productivity in sugar industry”. He dwelt on techniques and technology to increase sugar recovery in a factory.
Topics like sugar policy in India and quality circle for sugar factories were also discussed. Experts expressed concern over the fact that despite being second to Brazil as far as sugar production was concerned, India’s sugar export was negligible. The experts said that while Brazil exports 12 to 15 lakh tonnes of sugar, cost of sugar production in India was much more than in Brazil, Australia and South Africa.
Director of the institute SK Gupta thanked all the guests and expressed hope that participants would benefit from the deliberations.
