How Much You Know About the History of Sugarcane?

1. Sugarcane was originally domesticated around 8000 BC in New Guinea. 

2. In one Polynesian account of the origin of mankind, two fishermen, the only people on earth, one day, found a piece of cane in their net. At first, thinking it useless, they threw it away, but after catching it by chance for three days running, they planted it in the ground. It grew and after a while it burst and a woman appeared from it. She cooked for the men by day and hid by night in the cane. How the two men got there in the first place is not explained. 

3. In China, the boiled down and sun-dried juice of sugarcane was called "stone honey", and the most expensive, highly prized luxury items were the white cakes of stone honey imported from India. 

4.  The admiral of Alexander the Great, Nearchos, is recorded as describing "a reed which makes honey without bees." Theophrastus in 287 B.C. described it as "...honey which is in a cane", and Dioscoredes described it as "...a kind of concentrated honey, called saccharon, found in canes in India and Arabia, like in consistence to salt, and brittle to be broken between the teeth." 

5. When Prophet Mohammed’s armies (in Holy War for the conversion of the world to Islam) conquered Persia, they found sugarcane and adopted its cultivation, carrying it with them in their conquests, now calling it "the Persian Reed." 

6. The Egyptians developed clarification, crystallization, and refining processes. From there, sugarcane continued its Westward journey across Northern Aftica reaching Morocco. Then, crossing the Mediterranean to Southern Spain by 755 A.D. and to Sicily in 950 A.D., it progressed along the southern littoral of the Mediterranean, where in time it reached the islands off the Atlantic coast of Africa. 

7. The original word for sugar is probably the Sanskrit "sarkar" meaning grain. The East Indian word for sugar was "shekar"; in Arabic, it was "al zucar", adopted in Spanish as "azucar", French as "sucre", German as "Zucker" and in English as "sugar." 

8. Because growing and processing of sugarcanes was not easy in America then, and demand for sugar was extremely high, organized culling of Africa for slaves became very profitable and popular.

9. Today sugarcane is the world’s largest cultivated crop. The largest producer of Sugarcanes is Brazil, and behind him are India, China, Pakistan, Thailand and Mexico. 

10. Sugarcane represents a source for 75-80% of worldwide sugar production, with the majority of the rest being taken by sugar beet that is more suited to grow in Europe.

Source: ChewingCane, SugarHistory 

Agronomy Facts 9:51 AM