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Informist, Friday, Apr. 10, 2026

 

By Afra Abubacker

 

NEW DELHI – Sugar recovery losses--the reduction in moisture and sucrose content in sugarcane--largely stem from delays in crushing the harvested crop, said Narendra Mohan, former director at the National Sugar Institute. Delayed cane crushing results in sugar recovery losses of up to 0.5-1.0% during sugar production, a significant hit to an industry which banks on sugarcane to produce sugar as well as ethanol. While it is critical for mills to minimise the "cut-to-crush" time, Mohan said there was a need to ensure greater efficiency at farm levels than factory levels, as sugar content is formed in cane fields while factories merely extract it later from the crop.  

 

After harvesting, sugarcane must be crushed quickly to ensure optimal sugar output. "The cut-to-crush delay must be minimised. For manually harvested cane, it should be (crushed) within 24 hours. For mechanically harvested cane, it should be crushed within 12 hours, not 24, as it deteriorates faster," Mohan said. However, many times, the harvested sugarcane crop lies idle for days due to inclement weather, mill-level negligence, and poor planning by farmers such as early harvesting without ensuring timely dispatch to mills, he said. "In some cases, the delay goes up to three days. India is a country with a lot of festivals and occasions. Sometimes farmers cut the cane and keep it in fields, and celebrate festivals," Mohan said.

 

Mohan's remarks on sugar losses come at a time when the ongoing sugar season (Oct-Sept) is set to have weaker-than-expected sugar production, with output estimates repeatedly revised downwards as key producing states have been underperforming in terms of sugarcane yields. Late rains and flooding damaged crops in Maharashtra, while the widely used Co-0238 cane variety, which offered high yields for several years, has lost its edge after it became prone to diseases in Uttar Pradesh. "Factories opted for alternative cane varieties, but it did not perform the way Co-0238 did," Mohan said. 

 

The Indian Sugar & Bio-energy Manufacturers' Association is collaborating with the Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore to develop high-yielding cane varieties. "The trials are on at multiple locations, and hopefully after one or two years, we are going to have a couple of varieties which are going to show their worth and which are going to be rather fit for replacement or Co-0238," Mohan said. 

 

Asked if the 2026-27 sugar season is also likely to be weak in the absence of high-yielding cane varieties, Mohan said he hopes to see improvement in the next season as many farmers are likely to shift back to sugarcane from maize cultivation next year. "People were thinking maize was going to be a very competitive crop. But then farmers did not get good prices," Mohan said. 

 

Farmers' expectations of getting higher prices ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections next year in Uttar Pradesh, the largest sugarcane producer, and financial incentives provided by mills for retaining cane cultivation should help increase sugar production next season. "Factories are offering some loyalty bonus or seed retention as incentives to farmers, as millers want sugarcane for making sugar and ethanol," Mohan said. However, he cautioned that the outlook is premature at the current juncture. 

 

Asked if industry estimates on cane crushing and sugar production are reliable, Mohan said the integration of sugar and ethanol production has made data interpretation more complex. Mills that divert more sugarcane feedstock for ethanol will naturally report lower sugar recovery rates, despite good operational efficiencies. 

 

"We are now in a diversion era, where factories are diverting sugarcane juice and molasses for making ethanol. Recovery figures can be misleading now. We should focus more on sugar content in cane (and not sugar produced from sugarcane)," Mohan said. While industry bodies provide estimates of sugar diversion for ethanol production, Mohan noted that the underlying data on cane availability itself remains unreliable. 

 

Estimates of sugarcane production are based on assumptions around acreage and yield, and neither are generated in real-time. This lack of real-time data increases the margin of error and reduces its reliability in policy calibration. 

 

Mohan supported the sugar industry's shift from heavy reliance on government policy support towards efficiency-building through technical innovations and better process control. "Now, the industry has realised that every time they are not going to have the policy of their liking. Because the government is supposed to look into the welfare of many," Mohan said. 

 

At the same time, Mohan acknowledged the institutional gaps in supporting the industry with research and development in the sector. "Opportunities in the sugar industry are limited because there are just two prime institutions working in the country. One is the National Sugar Institute, which is owned by the government of India. And the second is Vasantdada Sugar Institute, which is a Maharashtra state cooperative institute. Against this, you have around 540 operational sugar factories and new factories incoming," Mohan said. "It is not that the industry is not trying to tap the potential. But we (research institutes) also have to come up to their expectations."  End

 

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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