Sugar Cane Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Sugar Cane - Essay Example Probably the most vital contribution of understanding the origins of the plant in world history is recounting the suppression of Africans who became slaves in the pursuit of supplying the needs for the plant's products. Sugar cane has been known for at least 2200 years dating back from the rise of Alexander the Greta when his army saw the plant during the conquest of India in 326 BC (Purseglove, 1979). The discovery of Arabs and Greeks on the potential of sugar cane juices to substitute to the popularly used honey was a turning point to the spread of the plant. Western expansion of Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries marked the introduction of sugar in Europe and the West (Heiser, 1981). It is a sub-tropical and tropical plant that grows well on spots with robust supply of sunlight and water - so long as the plant's roots are not waterlogged (Deerr, 1949). Purgloves (1979) accounts that sugar cane was originally grown for the sole purpose of chewing in vast territories of Asia and the Pacific. The rind was removed and the internal tissues sucked or chewed to extract the sugar and juice contents on it. According to the account, production of sweet products of the plant by boiling the cane juice was f irst discovered in India, most likely during the first millennium BC. It is in the purpose of this paper that sugar yield would characterize the sugar cane products to focus on the economics of the commodity on which the plant has been primarily known and used due to its properties to produce a sweet substance in whatever form. Processing of sugar canes whether following the old procedures or the present modern technique starts with harvesting. Harvesting of the sugar cane is done through chopping down the stems. Where possible the cane is fired before harvesting to remove the dead leaf material and some of the waxy coating. The fire burns at quite high temperatures but is monitored to last only for a short period so that the cane and its sugar are not harmed (www.food-info.net). Harvesting is done by hand during the earlier days but has been done with machine beginning 18th century. First stage of processing is the extraction of cane juice. Boiling was the main extraction procedure during the 15th century (Purseglove, 1979). With the upgrade of processes before the 19th century, extraction of sugar cane juice included the removal of excess water through the use of machines and cleaning up the juice with slaked lime (www.sucrose.com). As with the traditional way, evaporation comes next in the process by thi ckening up the juice in the syrup by removing the water through boiling. In earlier years, leaving it as syrup or drying up the water under the sun or through steaming and having unrefined crystals would have sufficed and the process of producing the end product would have ended (Heiser, 1981). With the advent of machines, even the simple traditional ones, crystallization takes place through painstaking procedures of boiling. After making the product fit for storage, affination comes next to continuously refine the end product characterized to be primarily as sweetener. The end