Karnataka - Belgaum

‘Sugarcane growers can switch over to beet’

Viable: Sugar beet can be an alternative crop to sugarcane.

Belgaum: Traditional sugarcane growers, who are worried over the increasing salinity and loss of soil fertility, may take up sugar beet (tropical sugar beet) as one of the alternatives.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, J.H. Kulkarni, who advised growers to consider sugar beet as an alternative crop to sugarcane, said that loss of fertility of soil made it difficult to cultivate other commercial crops. However, farm tests showed encouraging results and growers could consider it if they found their fields no more fertile to grow sugarcane.

According to information provided by Pune-based Syngenta India Limited at a two-day seminar for sugarcane development officers and farmers organised with the support of Karnataka Sugar Institute here recently, tropical sugar beet (Beta vulgaris spp. Vulgaris var altissima Doll) is a biennial sugar producing root crop and its hybrids are gaining importance in tropical and sub-tropical countries as a promising alternative energy crop for production of ethanol, which could be blended with petrol or diesel and used as bio-fuel.

The beet top could be used as green fodder and the beet pulp from the industry as cattle feed. Its advantages, as per the claims made by the company (a leading agribusiness company and working on tropical sugar beet and developing varieties suitable for the tropical agro-climatic conditions and sells them under the brand name ‘Hilleshog’), are beet could be cultivated as a short duration crop (six months), requires substantially less water than sugarcane, high sucrose content of 14 to 20 per cent, improves soil conditions, excellent rotational crop for enhancing the yield of the next crop and can be grown in saline and alkaline soil.

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