– Cereals)
Unknown in the wild, not prone to run wild. Cultivated for thousands of years. The largest areas are in Southeast Asia (India, Indonesia, Philippines), Cuba, Brazil and Argentina.
Modern sugar cane is a polyhybrid group of plants. These are rhizomatous, perennial, fast-growing, multi-stemmed plants up to 4-6 m high. The diameter of the stem is up to 5 cm. The leaves are wide, resembling corn. Flowering in plantation plants does not happen, because they are harvested earlier.
Sucrose, accompanied by glucose, is found in the parenchyma of the stems, its amount varies from 10 to 18% depending on the variety and weather conditions.
From sugar cane, humanity receives within 65% of all the sugar it needs. The rest (30-35%) of the amount of sugar is obtained from sugar beet, a typical crop in the USSR and other European countries.
Sucrose is extracted from fresh raw materials, turned into shavings, with hot water, followed by separation from the purified extract and crystallization.
Sucrose is not only a food product of the first need, but also a valuable medicinal substance. Sugar is the main filler of powders and tablets with potent and poisonous medicinal products, the raw material for various medicinal syrups. Glucose is obtained from sugar, its injection solutions are widely used in medicine (hypoglycemia, infectious diseases, liver diseases, with decompensation of heart failure, all kinds of intoxications, as a component of anti-shock and blood-substituting fluids, as an energy material, etc.).
The plant belongs to sugar, contains carbohydrates. SUGAR-BEARING PLANTS Sugar-bearing plants are understood as plants in which large amounts of monosaccharides (glucose, fructose) and sucrose accumulate.