Sugarcane

Sugarcane is propagated vegetatively from stalk cuttings called seed-cane, cut into sections with five to six buds, since the plant will not breed true from seed. Seed-cane is stored in a cool, moist place for up to two weeks before planting, laid lengthwise and overlapping in furrows six inches deep, then covered with four to six inches of soil; rows are spaced four to ten feet apart in a sunny, well-drained site.

Fertilizer such as 8-2-8 is applied at planting and again as the crop grows, but applications are halted after mid-July because late feeding can delay maturity and reduce sugar content. Soil is hilled up around the shoots during weeding, the crop is kept moist without being drowned, and it can be intercropped with vegetables or nitrogen-fixing legumes or used as a windbreak; its sharp-edged leaves make it unsuitable for planting along paths, and some canes are prone to lodging when mature.

Sugarcane is generally resistant to pests thanks to its rapid growth and the activity of natural predators, parasites, and seasonal conditions, but it can still be attacked by wireworms, grubs, stalk borers, mealy bugs, termites, and aphids without necessarily losing the harvest. Rodents and rabbits are managed with physical barriers, and disinfecting tools and harvesting equipment helps prevent the spread of disease between plants.

Stalks planted in one season are ready for harvest by early November of the following year. Mature canes are cut near the soil surface with a sharp knife or lopping shears, and cutting is timed to occur before a killing freeze.

Sugarcane stems are the source of extracted sugar, and the crop supplies the majority of the world's sugar production; its stem is also recorded as an edible plant part, eaten for its sweet juice, and it is listed among fiber plants.

Sugarcane is believed to have originated in New Guinea, where forms of the plant were cultivated in gardens for thousands of years before spreading elsewhere in Asia. Methods for manufacturing sugar from the cane were developed in India by about 400 BC, and the crop reached the Americas when Christopher Columbus carried it to the West Indies in 1493, after which it spread through tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. Modern sugarcane arose from a small number of interspecific hybridizations between Saccharum officinarum and the wild grass Saccharum spontaneum, representing an anthropogenic shift from a wild grass into a crop selected for sugar accumulated in its stem rather than its seed.