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Many plants produce sugar although only two are used
commercially and these are commonly known as sugar cane (Saccharum
officinarum) and sugar beet (Beta vulgaris).
The chemical equation given above is the reaction of
photosynthesis in a plant when sucrose is being made.
Exceptionally high hydrogen and oxygen contents make sugar
not just a food energy source, but it is also being used as a fuel for
vehicles.
Sugar is best known however as a sweetener for many of the
foods which we eat every day.
Related topics: Sugar
Cane, Unrefined Sugar, A-Z
of Sugar Types, Panela,
Refined Sugar, Sugar
Manufacture and Unrefined Sugar.
Some Interesting Facts.
- Sugar Cane - "Saccharum Officinarium"
- Probably originated in New Guinea.
- Sugar making was first recorded in India as early as 3000 BC
- A local legend in the Solomon Islands tells that the ancestors of
the human race were generated from a cane stalk.
- A crown made of sugar cane is described in the Atharvaveda, a sacred
book of the Hindus, written about 800BC.
- The Greek general Nearchus, who accompanied Alexander the Great to
India in the 4th Century BC tells of a reed that produced
"honey" without the aid of bees.
- In 1493, on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought
sugarcane to the New World, and the success of sugar plantations in
Santa Domingo led to its cultivation throughout the Caribbean and
South America.
- Sugar beet was originally extracted experimentally by the chemist
Andreas Marggraf in Germany in 1747.
- Napoleon was responsible for the creation of the sugar beet industry
in France to overcome the British blockade of supplies from the
West Indies in 1811.
- By 1880 sugar beet tonnage had overtaken that of sugar cane.
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