Tropical Sugarbeets

Recently, I was made aware that a seed company, Syngenta, had some varieties of so-called Tropical Sugarbeets. They are targeted primarily for growers in India, for the same areas that sugarcane is grown in. There is an entire slide show available online introducing the tropical sugarbeet. I found it quite interesting, because it compares sugarbeets with sugarcane, primarily for the benefit of Indian farmers. The names of the three tropical beet varieties are Pasoda, Hi 0064, and Doratea. While recoverable sugar content in sugarcane is described as being in the 11-12% range, it is in the 15-16% range in sugarbeet. Any sugarcane farmer knows that sugar content greatly affects profitability, especially as energy costs associated with harvesting, hauling, and processing of the crop keep increasing. In relatively dry areas, sugarbeets have the advantage of requiring only about 1/3 as much water as does sugarcane to produce a crop. In relatively wet areas, sugarbeets have historically had a much greater problem with devastating diseases. Farmers in Louisiana have tried growing sugarbeets, and have had good success in getting a nice looking crop, only to see some disease destroy the crop almost overnight in the heat and humidity of the Louisiana's summers. I honestly don't know what advantages tropical sugarbeets have over non-tropical beets. I can only speculate that it would be in the areas of heat and disease resistance.

One question I have is whether sugarbeets have ever been tried in southern Louisiana in the wintertime. Louisiana is well known for its fall/winter gardens, and red beets (Beta vulgaris) which is the same species as sugarbeets, is most logically grown as a fall/winter vegetable, along with such other vegetables as broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard (a relative), kohlrabi, leek, lettuce, onions, peas, potatoes, radishes, rutabagas, shallots, and turnips. If red beets succeed in southern Louisiana as a fall/winter-grown vegetable, why not grow sugarbeets in Louisiana in the winter as well? In Louisiana, I would think that sugarbeets would best succeed in the more transition areas that sugarcane is grown in, i.e., north of I-10, and not so much in the deep south Bayou Country, particularly in the heavy soil areas. California has two distinctive areas where sugarbeets are grown. One is largely in the highly productive San Joaquin Valley where sugarbeets are a summer crop, planted in March/April and harvested in September/October; the other is in the hot Imperial Valley, just north of Mexico, where beets are a winter crop, planted in September and harvested in April/May/June, as I understand. I think it would be interesting to try to grow sugarbeets here in the fall, at least on a small experimental basis, and see what happens.