Post-Harvest Losses and Control of Unprocessed Sugarcane
Post-Harvest Losses and Control of Unprocessed Sugarcane
Mian Noor Hussain Asghar Ali, Liaquat Ali Jamali, Shakeel Ahmed Soomro*, Shakeel Hussain Chattha, Khalil Ahmed Ibupoto, Naseer Ahmed Abbasi and Noor Mehdi Qumi
ABSTRACT
Losses of quality parameters during sugar recovery process are of severe problems which are caused by delayed transportation with unfavorable storage conditions. Keeping the fact in view a study observing post-harvest losses of sugarcane was carried out at the Department of Farm Structures, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam. Freshly harvested SPF-234 sugarcane variety was collected and stored for 10 days under two different methods i.e. one kept open and other covered with sugarcane trash. The samples of sugarcane were taken at an interval of 24 hours to determine different quality parameters i.e. cane weight, brix, pol/sucrose, purity, fiber and commercial cane sugar. The results revealed that weight loss and fibre content throughout increased with increasing storage period. However, a decrease was observed with increasing storage period for brix content, sucrose content, purity percentage and commercial cane sugar percentage under both storage conditions. The observations of results further revealed that sugarcane covered with trash provided better quality (i.e. low weight loss, higher percentage of brix, sucrose percentage and commercial cane sugar) as compared to sugarcane kept open. From the outcomes of current study, it is strongly suggested that local farmers should adopt sugarcane trash cover method which do provides a convenient and safe storage system.
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