Pioneer Knowledge of Sugarcane and Sugar

Abstract

The ancient Indian Puranic literature considers sugarcane juice as the ‘superior-most nutrition’ and wholesome food for a long disease-free and old-age free life. Celebrated Ayurvedic books Harita Samhita (600 BCE) and Bhavaprakasha Nighantu (1600 CE) mention sugarcane varieties, their morphological and medicinal properties and medicinal importance of the gur made from sugarcane juice. Sharangdhara Samhita (earlier half of the thirteenth century) mentions use of gur, sugar, mishri and sugarcane juice in making Kvaath (decoction), Fant, Kalka, Churna , Gutika or Vati, Avaleha and Asava or Arishta as an important constituent. Besides many Ayurvedic medicinal formulations are taken along with gur, sugar and mishri. Brihad Vimana Shastra (300 BCE) mentions that products of sugarcane juice were used as food for passengers travelling in Vimaan and a sugarcane variety ‘Bhiruka’ finds its mention in making a surveillance device, the Niryaspata darpan. Varahamihir’s Brihadsamhita (505–587 CE) mentions use of gur/jaggery and sugar in perfumery. History stands to the testimony that the first-ever technological mission from a foreign country (China) was deputed to Magadh (India) to learn, besides other aspects, a sugar manufacturing process. In the modern era, Indian scientists have also made a dent in sugarcane breeding and interspecific and intergeneric hybridization for varietal improvement, and their work also strengthens the view that sugarcane is ‘a live herbarium of cytogenetic peculiarities’. The All India Coordinated Research Project on Sugarcane is a unique national programme for dealing with important national problems and to develop appropriate, well-tested sugarcane varieties as well as production and protection technologies suited for increased production of sugarcane vis-à-vis sugar in different agroclimatic conditions in India. The sugarcane development system of the Uttar Pradesh is a unique unparallel programme initiated as early as in 1935.