Sugar Tech最新文献

In this research, a series of experiments were performed to evaluate the effect of the dissolved solids (brix) composition of the alkalized juice on the impurities sedimentation in the raw sugar manufacturing process. For this purpose, discontinuous sedimentation tests were carried out in graduated cylinders with industrial juices prepared at different brix. The results showed that sludge compaction and turbidity removal decreased by 5% and settling rate by 30% if the juice brix varied from 13 to 15°Bx. A mathematical regression model was used to correlate the settling rate with the juice brix with excellent goodness-of-fit. This mathematical model showed that the dependence of the settling rate on the juice brix was non-linear. The settling rate was most sensitive when the juice brix varied between 10 and 14°Bx, which means that small changes in brix in this range have a large effect on the clarification performance. The results provided a better understanding of this influence and constitute valuable experimental evidence as references for a better operation and operational control of this process.

Enhancing the sugar yield in sugarcane is considered a huge challenge due to the inherent complexity of its metabolic pathways and genomic organization. The incorporation of novel isomerase enzymes encoded through the Sweet Sucrose Isomerase Gene III (SSGIII) emerged as a promising strategy to augment sugar recovery percentage. This study meticulously engineered the SSGIII, optimized for expression in sugarcane, and subsequently introduced it into plant expression vectors under the influence of single and double promoter systems in conjunction with vacuole-targeted signal peptides at the 3′ end. The real-time PCR (RT-PCR) manifested the increased expression of SSGIII in sugarcane stalks relative to the leaves recommending a tissue-specific enhancement of sugar metabolism. The tested transgenic lines, SS-70, SS-55, SS-111, upheld very high level of sweetness in sugarcane. Transgenic line SS-220 transformed with triple gene constructs exhibited the maximum level of enhancement in sugar contents with a 27% improvement than13% over control line. This unprecedented augmentation was also seen to increase with maturity while reached optimum at the age of 18 months, underscoring the developmental dynamics influencing gene efficacy. The elite sugarcane line SS-220 displayed the highest Isomaltulose concentration (650 mM), substantiating the potential of triple gene constructs for maximal metabolic redirection. Furthermore, the Brix analysis corroborated these findings, exhibiting a surge in sugar content encompassing over 100% in transgenic lines relative to control plants. This investigation highlights the transformation potential of leveraging tailored genetic modifications, through the strategic deployment of SSGIII under diverse promoter systems, to significantly elevate sugar content in sugarcane. These advancements not only enhance the economic viability of sugarcane cultivation but also pave the way for future biotechnological interventions in crop improvement.

Unburned sugarcane harvesting has become a reality in Brazil, bringing impacts on sugarcane cultivation that are still not fully understood. This study evaluates the long-term impact (32 years) of different sugarcane harvesting systems—burned (B), unburned (U), and their alternation—on crop productivity, juice and stalk technological parameters, and soil micronutrient and organic carbon (OC) levels. The experiment, initiated in 1989, covered four cultivation cycles in Espírito Santo—Brazil. The experimental area comprised five blocks with four plots. Treatments included unburned harvesting, burned harvesting, and their alternations during the cycles. Evaluations were carried out in 2021, on the 5th ratoon of the fourth cycle. Productivity and technological quality of the juice and stalk were analyzed. Soil samples were collected at different depths and analyzed for OC content and the micronutrients B, Cu, Fe, Mn and Zn. Harvesting method combinations did not affect the productivity of dry leaves, tops, or stalks, nor the technological parameters. Average B and Fe contents were adequate, while Cu, Mn, and Zn were below recommended levels. The contents of Cu, Fe and Mn varied significantly between harvesting systems. While the harvesting systems over 32 years did not influence the productivity and technological parameters of the crop, the levels of micronutrient, except for B and Zn, and OC were affected by the different harvesting approaches. Although burned systems showed some positive responses, their continued use is not recommended due to environmental concerns. Sustainable alternatives should be prioritized to ensure long-term soil health and sugarcane viability.

Saccharum spontaneum, a wild progenitor of sugarcane, serves as a vital source of genes for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, particularly tolerance to water stress. To assess the drought tolerance potential of Saccharum spontaneum, 40 accessions along with two checks were evaluated in four environments for four drought-related traits, namely fresh biomass per clump (FBM), dry biomass per clump (DBM), tiller number per clump (TILL), and stalk height (SH) under control and drought treatments. Significant reductions in trait values were observed in each of these traits, and analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the accessions for stress tolerance and differential performance of accessions in control and drought. Among five computed stress tolerance indices for four traits, drought tolerance coefficient (DC) and geometric mean productivity (GMP) were uncorrelated, and promising genotypes were selected based on an integrated comprehensive index termed as membership function value for drought tolerance (MFVD) for each trait and across the traits. Considering environment-wise and pooled multivariate analyses, accessions IND 04–1372, IND 99–847, IND 99–850, IND 99–984, and IND 03–1307 were considered to be tolerant to drought and could serve as potential parents for trait introgression through developing trait-specific genetic stocks via interspecific hybridization.

Accurate visual detection of ratoon-emerged sugarcane seedlings hill (RSSH) is a key technology for improving intelligent replanting during the ratoon seedling stage. The unique growth characteristics of RSSH in complex sugarcane field environments, including irregular growth morphology and disordered distribution, present technical challenges for visual detection. To address these challenges, an improved YOLOv8n model is proposed in this study to achieve efficient detection. Firstly, a P6 detection layer was added to the backbone network to expand the receptive field, enabling better detection of RSSH with multi-scale target sizes. Subsequently, the SPDConv modules and a BiFPN network incorporating a high-resolution P2 feature layer were introduced into the neck network, effectively enhancing the model detection precision. To reduce the number of model parameters and computational complexity, GhostConv and C3 modules were respectively incorporated into the backbone and neck networks. Finally, the loss function was modified to a combined Focaler-CIoU loss function, further enhancing the model detection capability. The improved YOLOv8n model was compared with mainstream object detection models, including YOLOv5s, YOLOv6n, YOLOv7-tiny, YOLOv8n, YOLOv8s, YOLOv9s, YOLOv10n, and YOLOv11n. It achieved the highest precision and F1 score of 95.5% and 92.93%, respectively. The mAP@0.5 reached 96.2%, while the mAP@0.5–0.95 reached 84.4%, with a model size of only 12 MB. These results demonstrate that the improved YOLOv8n model has significant advantages in detecting RSSH in complex sugarcane field environments. This study provides technical support for intelligent ratoon sugarcane replanting.

Abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought, and chilling negatively affect plant growth, development and yield. To adapt to the stresses, plants have evolved multiple defense mechanisms. Small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO), an ubiquitin-like protein modifier, plays an important role in regulating plant response to abiotic stresses. Sugar beet has strong stress tolerance and is a good material for mining stress-tolerant genes. Through genome-wide analysis, 28 members of the sugar beet SUMO system were identified. The members were classified, and their structures and evolutionary relationships were analyzed. Through the transcriptional analysis of the gene expression patterns under five abiotic stresses including salt (200 mM NaCl), alkali (pH = 9.2), drought (20% PEG 6000), heat (40 °C) and chilling (4 °C), the potential functions of the sugar beet SUMO system may be inferred. This study has laid a foundation for further functional studies of the SUMO system and improving crop stress tolerance using the sugar beet resource.

This study evaluates the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives undertaken by sugar mills on farmers’ welfare, with a specific focus on six sustainable development goals (SDGs): poverty alleviation (SDG 1), food security (SDG 2), good health and well-being (SDG 3), quality education (SDG 4), gender equality (SDG 5), and economic growth (SDG 8). Using survey data from 571 farmers across four districts in Northern India, analyzed through Smart PLS software, the study assesses CSR-driven interventions. The findings reveal improvement in socioeconomic indicators, benefiting nearly 50 million farmers and dependents. Notable outcomes include a 30–40% reduction in water usage through improved irrigation methods and the production of 3.2 billion liters of ethanol, supporting renewable energy initiatives. Additionally, CSR efforts have enhanced sustainable farming practices such as intercropping and waste recycling, contributing to rural development and environmental sustainability. These results underscore the crucial role of CSR in fostering inclusive growth and advancing sustainability in the sugar industry.

Aiming to address the accuracy problem of cane tip recognition in complex natural environments, this paper proposes a cane tip feature annotation method based on the growth characteristics of sugarcane. In the context of the demand for lightweight and fast detection of cane tips, this paper optimizes the Yolov8n-Seg model with lightweight shared convolutional separated batch normalized detection head, model pruning, and knowledge distillation strategies. With these improvements, the accuracy of the optimized model increased by 0.2 percentage points, the number of parameters was reduced by 75.03%, the model size was reduced by 70.15%, the inference time is accelerated by 17.34%, and the GFLOPs were reduced by 40.00%. The lightweight cane tip detection model was deployed on the Jetson Orin NX platform with an average recognition frame rate of 7.42 f/s provides a lightweight hardware deployment solution for real-world applications in sugarcane harvesters. Finally, the depth camera was used for cane tip recognition and height measurement. The experimental results showed that the average relative errors of the camera were 0.189%, 0.675%, and 0.949% when the camera was 50 cm, 75 cm, and 100 cm away from the cane tip, respectively, which were all controlled within 1%, and were able to achieve accurate height measurement. Based on the statistical analysis of sugarcane clusters, this paper further proposes a sugarcane cluster identification method, providing a theoretical basis for saving adjustment time of the tip cutter during the harvesting process. It lays a theoretical and technical foundation for researching feature recognition, cutter height positioning, and real-time control of sugarcane harvester cuttings.

Climate change is a reality, which has implied the presence of more frequent and more intense extreme climatic phenomena. This study analyzed the incidence of drought risk on the panela sugarcane (‘Panela’ stands for raw sugarcane), one of the most promising crops in Colombia. The threat was calculated using the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), which measures the incidence of drought. The results showed that in the study area there is a probability of drought occurrence throughout the year. A vulnerability analysis was then carried out, which indicated a high susceptibility of this crop to water shortage. The risk map prepared shows an intermediate category in most of the territory of the study area, a low risk in the extreme north and south, and a high risk in the southeastern area. It is concluded that the crop could obtain better yields in the northern zone, since it is the least affected in the most critical period of the year. It is also recommended that an irrigation system be implemented for the sugarcane crops located in the other zones of the municipality.

Prebiotics have garnered significant attention as food supplements to support human health and serve as a preventive measure against various health disorders. Among these, xylooligosaccharides (XOS) stand out as promising non-digestible, low-molecular-weight prebiotics that promote gut microbiota and offer other secondary health benefits, including immunomodulatory, anticancer, antimicrobial, growth-regulating, and antioxidant effects as well. Despite extensive research on the potential of XOS as a potent prebiotic and therapeutic agent, a gap remains in understanding the precise mechanisms of their function. Moreover, their public use has not advanced significantly, primarily due to limitations in cost-effective production strategies. Further improvements are needed to scale the methods for the production from lab-scale to commercial-scale. This review aims to summarize existing reports and provide a comprehensive overview, helping to further research into the economical production of XOS using low-cost substrates. This will facilitate the transition of these oligosaccharides from the laboratory to the market. Additionally, studies exploring their potential as bioactive compounds have also been discussed to understand their structural–function relationship and broaden their application in various sectors.