Sweeteners, caloric and non-caloric

We had a group of college students from the Dallas area visit several government research facilities in our area over their spring break.  They spent a day with us.  One of our scientists, Dr. Paul White, was asked questions about sugar (i.e., table sugar or granulated sucrose) in comparison to other sweeteners, including how their chemical structures differed from sucrose.  After the tour, Paul developed a graphic that the rest of the scientists could use whenever the subject might come up again in future visits by the public.  Paul graciously allowed me to use his graphic as the basis for a personal blog entry.  I rearranged the order of the sweeteners and embellished his original graphic with color.  The chemical structures of the various sweeteners were taken from Wikipedia.

Sucrose is the standard by which all other sweeteners are measured.  High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the next most important caloric sweetener, but it has declined as of late for two reasons, 1) a negative image in comparison to table sugar, and 2) increased prices for corn which has made table sugar increasingly cost competitive.  The corn industry has worked hard to overcome the negative image that the public has of HFCS, and are now seeking permission from the FDA to use the name "corn sugar" on food labels.  Commercials from the corn industry state, "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."  Natural caloric sweeteners of lesser importance include honey, maple syrup, etc.

Non-caloric sweeteners have had less impact on cane and beet sugar consumption than HFCS.  But their impact is still substantial.  We have essentially gone through four generations of non-caloric sweeteners, namely saccharin (Sweet'N Low), aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Sweeta), and now Stevia glycosides from the Stevia plant, sold in various formulations as Stevia, Truvia, etc.  The latter is a natural product.  The others are artificial sweeteners, though sucralose is a sucrose molecule modified (some OH groups replaced with Cl) in a way that makes it 600 times as sweet as sucrose.

Tropical Cyclone Yasi slams into Queensland, Australia

What is being called the "Cyclone of the Century," Yasi is now coursing its way through Queensland. It was reported to be a Category 5 storm as it approached landfall.  In its wake, it dealt a powerful "blow" to the midsection of the Australia sugarcane industry, causing world sugar futures prices to reach 30-year-high levels.  Australia is the 3rd largest exporter of sugar in the world.  I have had the good fortune of visiting Queensland twice during my career.  Between the two trips, I have been lucky enough to have traveled by road from Cape Tribulation near the top of Queensland, all the way south to Mackay, then by air to Bundaberg and eventually to Brisbane. Queensland is indeed a very large state.  So to see the size of Cyclone Yasi relative to the size of Queensland, for me, was amazing.  Yasi came on shore just south of Cairns where Dr. Anna Hale and I recently visited (see blog entry "Trip to Australia," dated 30 Aug 2009).  The life cycle of sugarcane in Australia in early February, would be equivalent to our sugarcane in early August.  Like our sugarcane, the greatest damage from a storm like this will probably be more from the water than from the wind, water that sugarcane farmers in Australia certainly didn't need, considering the extensive flooding that they have already experienced.  Something to remember when looking at the path of a cyclone south of the equator, is that the south side is the "bad" side, as it travels from east to west.  Intuitively, we would think of it as being on the north side,  but a southern cyclone spins clockwise, causing the surge of water to be on the opposite side from what we normally expect.  The last word I heard is that Cairns came through this major storm better than most expected.  Residents of Cairns and surrounding communities were benefited by being on the "good" side of the storm.  Further south at Mission Beach, which took the most direct hit, the devastation has been described as "apocalyptic."  The coastal town of Cardwell, a few kilometers south of Mission Beach, was described as having been "wiped off the map."

Excess sugarcane bagasse -- what to do with it

Bagasse is the fibrous residue remaining after crushing/shredding sugarcane and washing the sugar out of it.  Bagasse provides the power required to run the sugarcane mills that process the sugar from sugarcane, thus making sugar production from sugarcane one of the most energy efficient operations in the plant crop world.  In Florida and Hawaii, energy derived from burning bagasse not only powers the mills, but is also sold to the public as electricity.  This is referred to as co-generation.  When burned in the mill boilers, the energy derived from one ton of bagasse is roughly equivalent to the energy obtainable from one barrel of oil.  In Louisana, electricity is still too inexpensive for mill owners to make a profit burning the excess bagasse, generating electricity and selling it to the public.

Now that the sugarcane harvest season is over, and mill yards are no longer obscured by standing cane, one is struck by the huge piles of bagasse that build up next to them.  The photo above was taken of the mill yard at Raceland Sugar Co., Raceland, LA, from Hwy 90 (future I-49) overpass over Hwy 1 after most of the cane was harvested, and after the occurrence of a killing freeze on Dec. 15.  Note how the massive bagasse piles obscure the view of the mill.  One needs only to drive next to these piles of bagasse to appreciate just how massive they really are. A list of Louisiana's mills and their locations is found on the website of the American Sugar Cane League. 

In the green fuels debate, there has been much discussion about conversion of fibrous residue from plant products into cellulosic ethanol.  It would seem that, if cellulosic ethanol production or the production of some other fuel, such as butanol, from plant fiber is close to becoming economically viable, a great place to test its potential is in an already existing industry where the fibrous residue is a by-product that has already been gathered into central locations.  One issue facing sugarcane breeders, and ultimately the sugar industry, is whether it is an asset or a liability to the industry to develop and release sugarcane varieties possessing higher fiber levels than the current standard of 11-12%.  Perhaps it is a question that gets answered differently depending on whether we are taking the short-range or the long-range view.

Lexus going sugarcane green

Toyota's Lexus CT200h small luxury hybrid will be the first car outfitted with a sugarcane-based product called bio-PET, also referred to as Ecological Plastic.  The product's initial use will be in the luggage compartment liner.  However, the material may also be used in the manufacture of other interior plastic-based parts of the car, including seats and carpet.  Check out the the story at crispgreen.com.

Houma area buzzing with activity

Houma seems to be on national news a lot these days, in part, because it is a major oil town close to the gulf oil spill but perhaps just far enough away to not be considered highly vulnerable, as are some other critical locations that are closer to the coast and the spill.  It is the logical location for what has now become the BP's Louisiana Command Center (formerly, BP training center), one of the key centers where Admiral Thad Allen is updated, and is seen issuing some of his press releases.  The command center is located at the crossroads of Hwy 30 and Hwy 311, just north of Houma...and only ten minutes from where we live.  There is major building activity going on behind Houma's major mall strip that would make one think that Houma is currently in a rapid expansion mode.  There is a tremendous amount of buzz and activity in Houma, right now.  Mixed with this activity is a strong sense of uncertainty and concern with hurricane season now bearing down on us.

A brand new $22M Marriott Courtyard is being built right across from where I work, and is well ahead of schedule...to be opened later this fall (see picture).  When we walk out of our office building, and look in the direction of our sugarcane plants that are on the crossing carts, the Marriott Courtyard now seemingly looms over our plants, and catches our attention.   Right now, our plants are being rolled into dark houses each evening to create a "tropical" daylength that stimulates them to go into a flowering mode.  They are on schedule to flower beginning in late September.  Without a photoperiod treatment, they wouldn't flower until December, and then only sporadically, if at all, and our seed production would be far below what it is with the photoperiod treatment. We just recently built a new photoperiod / crossing house complex, and none to soon.  This year, the on-site facility is a backup, as we "break in" our new facility at our farm nine miles away.  With all the building going on around us at our main Station, incident light will make it increasingly difficult to create the photoperiod effect needed to get our plants to flower when we want them to.

Brazil...some amazing sugarcane statistics

Brazil is the proverbial gorilla in the room when it comes to sugarcane production. According to UNICA, during the 2009/2010 campaign that concluded on March 31, Brazilian mills had processed 542 million metric tons (or tonnes) of cane. Of the total cane processed, 42.6% was used for sugar and 57.4% for ethanol. Total sugar production was 28.6 million tonnes, while ethanol production was 23.7 billion liters. To put some of this into perspective, Brazil hauled more cane to their mills than the U.S. hauled corn (331 million tonnes), soybeans (73 million tonnes) and wheat (56 million tonnes), put together, based on crop statistics from FAOSTAT. And these are our top three agronomic crops. Granted, the collective value of the unprocessed corn, soybeans, and wheat vastly exceeds that of raw cane, but still, the sheer weight and volume of cane being transported for processing in Brazil is truly impressive. The total cane production in the U.S. last year, combining FL, HI, LA, and TX, was 27.8 million tonnes, or approximately 1/20th the size of the Brazilian crop. The U.S. is ranked 9th, after Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Mexico, Pakistan, Australia, and Colombia. In terms of ethanol produced from sugarcane, Brazil is really the only significant player out there right now.

Brazil has decided to wage an education campaign, in part, to bring into question the basis for the stiff tariffs the U.S. has imposed on ethanol exported from Brazil. If the U.S. is honestly trying to go green, and if the U.S. corn industry can't even begin to meet the potential ethanol demand, what is the point of the stiff tariffs? Brazil doesn't understand why the corn industry is pushing their congressional representatives to be so protective, when it isn't really necessary, and runs counter to our broader objective, as a country, to go green.

A greenhouse full of sugarcane seedlings

Each year, at the USDA Sugarcane Research Unit in Houma, we grow sugarcane seedlings from true seed resulting from crosses made during the winter. True seed of sugarcane has a shape similar to that of sesame seed but is much smaller, about the length of the commas in this sentence, which helps explain why sugarcane is not sexually propagated on farms and plantations. After about a month of careful nurturing, tiny seedlings can be transplanted to 72-cell trays, which you see in the photo above, taken yesterday. We transplant around 90,000 to 100,000 seedlings each year. This year, beginning on Apr 22, we will start transplanting these seedlings to the field. The field transplanting operation will take about a week to complete. Seedlings will be planted 16" apart on 6' wide rows. They will be cut back at the end of the year, then will begin to re-grow next spring. Those that cannot survive a Louisiana winter will cull themselves out. In the fall of 2011, the top 10% of surviving seedlings will be selected and be asexually propagated into the 2nd stage of selection. They will undergo additional stages of visual selection, increase, and multi-location yield testing. The entire breeding and selection process, from the time a cross is made, until a new variety is released to the industry, takes roughly twelve years. I will be long since retired before any commercial variety might possibly be selected from among the approximately 40,000 seedlings that can be viewed in the photo above. We have three greenhouses for seedling propagation, of which two are completely filled and one is partially filled with transplant seedlings this year.

Green and Brown

Casualties of the harsh winter here included our grapefruit and key lime citrus trees, and our guava tree. However, we had an above average production from our winter garden, and produced the best looking carrots that we have ever produced here this past winter. At our Station, we planted sugarbeets for the second year in the winter (November planting), and in spite of the temperature dipping into the low 20's for several consecutive days, the beets look just fine as seen in the photo above that I took this morning.

However, there is concern in the sugar industry as to how well the cane is going to come up in the spring. It is not unusual for the above-ground growth of fall planted cane to be killed by the occasional freeze in the winter, so that the photo I took today near our farm is not alarming in and of itself. The above-ground dead growth is usually cut back or burned off to let the spring growth come through. For the most part, the fall-planted crop should be OK. Of greater concern than the plant crop is how well the stubble crops of the more freeze sensitive varieties survived the harshest winter we have had in several years. Each successive stubble crop is closer to the surface of the ground and thus will not be as well protected as the previous crop. We will know fairly soon how well our sugarcane crop made it through the winter, inasmuch as spring is right around the corner.

USDA's New Sugarcane Crossing Complex

Today, I finally had a chance to get a close look at our brand new crossing complex, made up of a 6-bay photoperiod facility (PF)(Pic 1); a 3-compartment crossing facility (XF) (Pic 2); 12 mobile crossing carts of which four can be rolled from the PF into the XF; and finally an isolation pad (Pic 3). I was excited, in part, because I had a lot to do with its design. The concept behind the crossing facility is novel in the sense that it does not follow the model of any other sugarcane crossing facility in the world that I am aware of. To see something that you and your associates draft on paper actually come to fruition and exceed your expectations is very exciting indeed. There are bugs to be worked out, but all in all, I couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.

Tomorrow, Argus will be showing us how to use all of the controls. The 3-compartment XF has 1) a room for rolling in two-sets of carts (= 4 carts) with sugarcane plants on them, 2) a crossing room where crosses are arranged and fertilization occurs in one of 99 isolation cubicles (Pic 4), and 3) a maturation room where tassels are maintained while being somewhat isolated from one another until the seed fully matures and can eventually be harvested from the tassel (Pic 5).

In the past, our seed production has varied greatly from year to year, ranging from roughly 100,000 to 1,000,000 seeds. With the much greater temperature control, we should be able to maintain optimum conditions for pollen production. I anticipate much better seed production from now on, and will be disappointed if we cannot consistently produce at least 1,000,000 viable seeds per year from now on.

By the way, if you look at the greenhouse (XF), you will notice the super-structure that supports it. It was designed to withstand the wind force of a Cat 4 hurricane, as I understand.

HC&S plantation on Maui gets a one-year reprieve

The one remaining sugarcane plantation in Hawaii, HC&S on Maui, has avoided getting the plug pulled on them for at least one more year, so they will continue planting sugarcane for at least another full year. My guess is that the decision to extend their life was hotly debated, the debate being driven by several factors.

Firstly, profitability or the lack thereof. HC&S reported losses of $13 million in 2008 and an estimated $30 million in 2009, primarily due to lowered yields resulting from a 3-year drought, and imposed water restrictions. The drought and water restrictions have caused sugar cane production at HC&S to fall from 200,000 tons six years ago to 127,000 tons in 2009. More favorable prices for sugar and an expected improvement in the long-term weather situation undoubtedly weighed into the final decision to extend the life of the plantation.

Secondly, the parent company, Alexander & Baldwin, recognizes that HC&S is positioned as well as any company could possibly be, not only in Hawaii but anywhere in the U.S., to produce renewable energy from a short-rotation crop. After all, who else in the U.S. is capable of producing well over 100 tons of fresh weight biomass and 13 tons sugar every two years per acre of land, and do it by harvesting incrementally throughout almost the entire year. HC&S has the advantages that other biomass producers in the U.S. can only dream about having. Even Brazil's sugarcane yields, as much as they have improved over the past 20 years, fall short of the yield potential that HC&S has demonstrated in the past as an energy crop plantation.

Lastly, the State Commission on Water Resource Management has yet to rule on a dispute between HC&S and environmental activists, Native Hawaiians, and farmers over water the sugar mill diverts from 19 East Maui streams, and the Commission may not rule in the plantation's favor. An unfavorable ruling would pretty much spell the end of the plantation.

Freezing on the Bayou

Finally, we are getting relief from the freezing weather down here in southern Louisiana. I have lived in this area for just over 10 years, and this is without question the coldest week I have encountered since moving here. In the last eight days, we have been significantly below freezing at night, as cold as 22 degrees (F) early Sunday morning (January 10). I was amazed at the number of schools that have shut down around this area because of the cold temperatures. I suppose this has as much to do with bursting frozen pipes as anything else.

All of the sugarcane froze above ground, so at work, we finally have an opportunity to really take advantage of a sugarcane freeze test that we install annually. On Thursday, Jan 7, we cut stalks out of every plot in a fully replicated test that has all of the important varieties that our industry either currently relies on or will shortly be planting in their fields. For the next several weeks, until there is no further change in deterioration, we will be repeatedly re-sampling this test. The expectation is that the freeze this year will have been extreme enough (hopefully, not too extreme) to show which varieties are the most freeze tolerant and the least freeze tolerant. Those that are the most freeze tolerant will obviously tend to be left in the field the longest during future harvest seasons. Thankfully, much of the cane has already been harvested this season, and many of the mills have already shut down. What is interesting is that even though the cane stalks may freeze and thus be subject to rapid deterioration, especially the more sensitive varieties, not very much deterioration will occur until the cane in the field is significantly above normal refrigeration temperatures, so I think our farmers, for the most part, dodged the bullet this year, at least as far as harvesting goes. There is some question as to whether the below-ground temperatures got cold enough in places as far north as Bunkie and New Roads to severely affect stubble crops, as they did in 1989.

Our garden, and many of our more temperature sensitive plants around our home got whacked pretty hard. We probably lost some of our weaker citrus trees. A guava tree we planted next to the road last year looks pretty miserable as well. I have heard that in Florida, where several cold temperature records were set, iguanas are falling out of trees, and the pythons have become an easy catch for those trying to reduce their numbers. Since I don't care for either one, this is welcome news.

Erianthus bengalense - a species with ornamental potential

A few years back, we were experimenting with a relative of sugarcane (Saccharum) where I work, called Erianthus bengalense, the genus of which I believe in Greek, means red (eri) flower (anthus). We are no longer experimenting with Erianthus bengalense, but still have an interest in Erianthus arundinaceus, which is more robust, but, in my opinion is considerably less attractive. Unfortunately, in the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) system, all the species within the Erianthus genus got lumped under Saccharum, which is technically not accurate.

I was enamored with the beauty of the plant, so I planted a stool of it in my back yard for its ornamental effect before the field it was in got plowed. The last two years, it was beaten up pretty badly because of severe storms, but this year, it achieved its full glory. [I added a second picture taken about two weeks later; note that the white speck at the top is the moon in the background]

Sugarcane harvesting around the corner in Louisiana

In about one week from now, southern Louisiana goes through a transformation. The roads become filled with trucks loaded with cane headed to one of the twelve or so sugarcane mills remaining in Louisiana. The mills take on the look of beehives with all the trucks arriving to drop their loads of cane. Clouds of steam are churning out of smoke stacks at each of the factories from the sugarcane bagasse being burned to power the processing of cane in order to extract the sugar from the crop.


Today, a few USDA scientists from our location, including myself, had the opportunity to go to the John Deere factory in Thibodaux. This factory manufactures cane harvesters that are sent in sugarcane-growing areas all over the world. We were looking at some of their newest, most advanced harvesters, and even got to see a very interesting-looking prototype harvester that was designed to harvest a wide range of large tropical grasses over variable row conformations. It was a fun experience. I took a couple of shots of their latest "green machines," used for harvesting sugarcane. Of course, the prototype machine is still under wraps, so I wasn't allowed to take any shots of it. John Deere bought out Cameco a few years back, but kept the Cameco yellow color for a while. Now all of their cane harvesters are John Deere green, so it is easy to tell the farmers that have newer machines from the farmers that are still relying on the older Cameco-colored machines.

The machines are designed to cut the cane, chop the stalks into short sections less than a foot long, elevate the stalks from the harvester into a wagon, and leave all of the leafy trash in the field so that the mill only has to deal with the cleaned stalk sections. Here are two videos, one showing the harvest operation, the other giving you a sense of what you would experience being in the cab while the cane was being harvested.

Judge has ruled against genetically modified sugar beets

I learned at work that Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, has ruled against GM sugar beets. His decision was based on his opinion that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on future planting of the GM beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. How widely? Over 95% of the U.S. sugar beet acreage is planted to Roundup Ready beets this year (2009). Worse than that, there is no non-RR seed available. It could take up to two years for the sugar beet industry to be in a position to completely switch back to non-RR beets. This could cripple the beet industry - an industry with a lot of powerful senators. Which states grow the most beets? Minnesota and Idaho are at the top of the list. I'm sure there will be a lot more to this story. In the mean time, rest assured that the cane sugar industry is not similarly impacted. The above picture was taken in Rupert, Idaho by Chad Chase for The New York Times, which reported the story on September 22.

I don't know where you come down on the GM issue, but here is a provocative video that ties my last two posts together, done by Penn and Teller. It's about 10 minutes long, if you have the time.

Trip to Australia

As mentioned in the previous post, I had the opportunity to attend the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (ISSCT) Breeding & Germplasm Workshop held near Cairns, Queensland, Australia, with Dr. Anna Hale, peer research geneticist at our Sugarcane Research Laboratory in Houma. The workshop was held at the Novotel Rockford Palm Cove Resort about 30 kilometers north of Cairns. To get a flavor of Palm Cove, check out the embedded video at the palmcoveaustralia website. We were in Australia during their winter, but this part of Australia is tropical, so even at night, we didn't see the temperature dip below 60 F. In fact, the weather couldn't have been more perfect during our trip. The beach was only a stone's throw away from the resort, and all the restaurants in Palm Cove were along the beach front. We were actually delayed in getting to our destination because of a missed connection (air traffic related). We should have flown from Newark NJ to Hong Kong-Brisbane-Cairns. Instead we ended up going to the Narita Airport near Tokyo, then to Guam for a 23-hr layover, then to Cairns, missing a pre-workshop Genomics meeting held at Port Douglas, Queensland, but getting to our destination before the Workshop began. The view from the balcony side of my room that greeted me the morning after we arrived, reminded me of Tennessee (see first pic). Over 70 fellow sugarcane researchers (geneticists and related disciplines) were at the Workshop from 17 countries. This was Anna's first trip, so now she can finally connect faces with names she is already familiar with.

One of the really neat things that happened at this meeting was that two presentations were given from other countries that I knew I had impacted. One was from the Island of Reunion (France) where I was part of a team of consultants in 1984. At that time, we strongly recommended that sugarcane seedlings be evaluated across the extreme range environments that sugarcane was grown on the Island, and not at just one location. Another recommendation we gave was that modifications be made to their breeding facility to assure better flowering, allowing for a wider range of crosses to be made. The thrust of the Reunion presentation at this workshop was that the number of advanced clones with commercial potential had increased greatly as a result of following our recommendations. The two young scientists from Reunion seemed thrilled to meet me, as I was one of the members of the 1984 consulting group. The other presentation I had an impact on was from South Africa. The South Africans adopted single-stalk small pot culture of plants used on crossing carts (as opposed to air-layering stalks of plants in a large container) following my presentation in a similar Workshop held in South Africa six years ago. They reported that small-pot culture proved to be far more efficient and less labor intensive than their old method, and that the number of flowers they annually achieve has remained constant.

The Workshop went from Monday through Friday (Aug 17-21). On Wednesday, we visited Australia's premier sugarcane breeding station located just south of Brisbane and saw their photoperiod and crossing facilities. We also went to a variety yield trial, and learned more about how selection and yield testing is done in Australia.

Following the Workshop, Anna and I spent a full day taking in the Outer Great Barrier Reef (stopping for 2-hrs at Green Island), then a second day going north as far as Cape Tribulation, returning by way of the Atherton Tableland above the Cairns coastal region, stopping briefly to take in the famed Barron Falls at Kuranda. Our final day was spent in Cairns, where we did some shopping for gifts before returning home. Thankfully, our return home was without incident.

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!

Merry Christmas to all from Cajun Country. The above picture was taken by myself in the small town of Canal Point, Florida at a food stand. It was close enough to Christmas, and the sugarcane stalks were close enough to the Christmas colors of green and red I felt compelled to stop and take the shot and save it for Christmas Day. It is also intended to suggest abundance and prosperity from Mother Earth, as we all look forward to a new year. May you all have a happy and prosperous new year!

Winter has arrived!

As of midnight last night, winter has officially arrived. Julie reported temperatures of -2 F (-22 wind chill) in northern Indiana. I saw that it got down to -20 F in infamously cold International Falls, Minnesota. We were in the low to mid-30's in southern Lousiana (mid-20's at the top of the sugar belt in Bunkie, LA). The sugarcane farmers were working feverishly (maybe a poor adverb choice in this instance) to get their crop in as quickly as possible. The cane canopy has already gone from green to straw color in much of the sugar belt as a result of earlier cold spells, so the protective green canopy blanket has already been removed. Stalk deterioration is limited as long as the crop remains cool following a freeze; temperatures into the 70's become the farmer's worst case scenerio. I believe the industry will be in pretty good shape in getting its crop in on a timely basis, thanks to dry weather during most of the harvest season.

Someone locally shared a nice video following the recent snowstorm in New Orleans that I thought was appropriate as Christmas approaches. It is fittingly set to Louis Armstrong music. Here it is. Enjoy.

Making sugarcane crosses for Louisiana at Canal Point, Florida

Every year, in early December sugarcane breeders in Louisiana go to Florida to make genetic crosses. The seed will mature in Florida and be returned to Louisiana to begin a 12-year selection process that ultimately culminates in the development of new, higher yielding, disease and insect resistant varieties. The breeding activity occurs at the USDA Sugarcane Field Station at Canal Point, Florida, on the southeast corner of Lake Okeechobee. Temperatures are moderated by this large lake, so this is a good location to have a sugarcane breeding facility within the continental U.S., where sugarcane naturally flowers outdoors. A blowup of the above picture captured from from Google Earth shows the very large and narrow crossing house where the crosses are made. Parents designated to be used as females are maintained outdoors; night temperatures below 60 F will kill the pollen they produce, and thus cause the outdoor plants to be largely male sterile. Parents designated to be used as males are maintained on a very long rail cart, which gets rolled out of the crossing house every morning (so we have room to make crosses indoors inside cubicles on both sides of the building), then rolled inside the crossing house every evening so that they are kept warm at night. The crossing activity in Florida is aimed at making commercial crosses for both the Florida and Louisiana sugarcane industries. Our people have been in Florida over the past two weeks; I will be going down this week. We do make crosses at Houma, Louisiana on a smaller scale, but most of the locally made crosses are designed to introgress highly desirable traits from wild canes into a commercial background. Examples of desirable traits from the wild canes include improved vigor, cold tolerance, stalk population, and stubbling ability.

Harvesting sugarcane in a snowstorm

It may seem hard to believe, but some Louisiana farmers may be harvesting sugarcane in a snow storm, and will certainly be harvesting the crop with snow on it this morning. The harvesting must go on regardless of weather. This graphic, taken from a radar image displayed on the Intellicast website at 6:30 this morning, shows Lafayette (LFT) in the center of that burrrr blue color. Lafayette is the hub of Cajun country, and more or less the hub of sugarcane cultivation in Louisiana. Sugarcane harvest season in Louisiana normally goes from late September through Christmas. This year, the farmers got off to a late start because of two hurricanes, so they still have a fair amount of cane left to harvest. However, it is not unusual to be harvesting sugarcane in Louisiana after a mild freeze toward the end of the harvest season. It is much more unusual to be harvesting cane with snow on it. The last time it snowed as far south as Houma (HUM) was on Christmas day in 2004. The last time it snowed in Baton Rouge (BTR) was...hmm...it's snowing there as I'm writing this... As pics come in, I may add one or two to this posting date.

Genetic Improvement of Bioenergy Crops

Dr. Wilfred Vermerris, Associate Professor at the Genetics Institute and Agronomy department at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, edited a book entitled, "Genetic Improvement of Bioenergy Crops," that was published by Springer. Dr. Vermerris invited me to write the chapter on energy cane, which I agreed to do. I entitled the chapter, "Genetic Improvement of Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) as an Energy Crop." Robert Cobill, formerly on the staff of the USDA Sugarcane Research Laboratory in Houma, LA, is co-author. The book is out now, and available through Amazon. Dr. Vermerris will be using this as his textbook when he teaches a course on the same subject.