Sugar Cane
Saccharum officinarum, a strong, cane-stemmed grass, from 8 to 12 feet high , producing a large, feathery plume of flowers. It is wild or cultivated in the Southern United States, India, China, the South Sea Islands, the West Indies, and South America, flour ishing in the zone or belt from the equator to 35° or 40° N. and S. The land chosen for its cultivation is usually a good loam or light clay well manured.
The leafy ends of the canes of the preceding season are cut off, or the whole cane is cut up, each piece being made to contain two nodes or joints. Twenty thousand of these are planted on each acre in January and February, the harvest begins early in December, and the cutting and crushing of the canes are carried on till January or February.
There are several varieties of the sugar cane.
SUGARS. Sugar is the generic name for a class of substances belonging to the carbohydrate group. They either occur naturally in the animal or vegetable kingdom, or are produced by the action of dilute acids or ferments on another class of bodies known as glucosides. As a class, they possess a sweet taste, although the degree of sweetness varies greatly with sugars of different kinds. They are readily soluble in water, less soluble and some times wholly insoluble in alcohol, and insoluble in ether and similar solvents which will not mix with water. Some sugars undergo alcoholic fermentation with yeast, others change from one sugar to another under the action of dilute acids. Many of them are of great SUGARS value as foodstuffs. Chemically, they consist of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen being always the same as in water, namely two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen. They are divided into three large groups: (1) The mono-saccharides, having the formula C6H12O6. (2) The disaccharides, having the formula C12H22 O11. (3) The tri-saccharides, having the formula C18H32016. It will be noticed that the formula for the di-saccharides is exactly twice that of the mono-saccharides less one molecule of water H₂O; while the tri-saccharides are three times the mono-saccharides, less two molecules of water. All the common sugars belong to one of the first two groups. 1. Mono-saccharides. The best known sugar among the mono-saccharides is Dextrose, although this latter name is also apse , commonly known as Glucose, plied to other sugars of a similar character. It occurs in large quantities in grapes and hence is sometimes called gar are frequently found in dried grapes grape sugar. Hard nodules of this suor raisins, and it is a common constituand also occurs in honey. It is prepared ent of sweet fruits, roots and leaves, artificially by boiling a solution of cane sugar with dilute acids, and also from starch by similar means, this process sugar with dilute acids, and also from being known as "inversion." So-called corn Dextrose crystallizes in warty masses, syrup is inverted corn starch. but is most familiar in the form of syrup. It is less sweet than cane sugar. to dextrose and occurs with it in many Fructose or Levulose, is closely allied sweet fruits and in honey. When cane sugar is inverted by dilute acids, equal parts of dextrose and levulose are produced, the mixture being known as charides are of academic interest only. "invert sugar." The other monosac- 2. Di-saccharides. The commonest disaccharide is Sucrose or Cane sugar. The two chief sources from which it is obtained are the sugar cane and the sugar beet. The former contains 15-20 per cent., the latter seldom more than 16 per cent. It also occurs in many sweet fruits, such as the pineapple, the strawberry, etc. Sucrose crystallizes from water in foursided prisms. It melts at 160° C., and on cooling solidifies to a glassy mass known as barley-sugar. Heated to higher temperatures, it loses water and becomes converted to caramel. It is very soluble in water, at ordinary temperatures dissolving in one-third of its weight of water. Sucrose is the chief constituent of maple sugar.
Maltose or malt sugar is formed from SUGARS SUICIDE starch by the enzyme diastase. Malt is the grain of barley which has been caused to sprout by wetting it, in heaps, with water and then keeping in a warm moist atmosphere. This sprouting brings about the formation of the diastase. to transform the town into a watering On drying the malt and stirring with water, the diastase acts upon the starch, converting it to maltose. Since the passing of the Prohibition Act, large quantities of malt syrup have been placed on the market as a table syrup, a basis for soft drinks, for candy manufacture and other purposes. Lactose or Milk-sugar is an important constituent of the milk of all mammals, in which it occurs to the extent of about 4 per cent., although the precentage varies somewhat. It can be prepared from milk by treating with rennet, when the curd separates, leaving the sugar in solution in the whey. On evaporation the crude lactose is obtained. The solution may be purified by filtration through charcoal, and the sugar obtained by crystallization. Lactose is far less sweet than cane sugar.
The tri-saccharides are of academic interest only, the most important being raffinose.
The action of dilute acids on sugars is of interest and importance. As already stated, sucrose undergoes inversion when its solution is boiled with dilute acids, invert sugar, a mixture of dextrose and levulose, being produced.
Similar changes take place in all the disaccharides, under similar conditions, in every case one or more mono-saccharides being formed. Milk sugar gives dextrose and galactose, maltose gives dextrose only. The process is one of splitting the sugar molecule in two with the addition of a molecule of water, thus:
C12H22O11 + H2O = 2C6H12O6 The fermentation of cane sugar, maltose and lactose by yeast can only take place after inversion. This can be brought about either by dilute acids, as described above, or by an organism known as an enzyme. Ordinary yeast contains the enzyme which inverts cane sugar and maltose, and hence can ferment both these sugars. Dextrose, fructose and invert sugar are fermentable by all yeasts.