Today is Sonvsar Paddvo or Gudi Padwa, the New Year of peninsular India. It is called Yugadi in Kannada, and Ugadi in Telugu, and celebrated across the ancient Vijayanagar kingdom from Hampi in the West coast to Vijaywada and Vishakapatnam on the east coast of India. And, it is celebrated in Goa, too.
The sweet flavour of the day is that of sugarcane and its jaggery. They are the central part of the celebrations.
SWEET CONNECTIONS
Sugarcane is a crop that is native to India and belongs to the bamboo family. In the Deccan plateau, it has the highest productivity and value among all commercial crops in India.
The thickened cane juice is used to make khandsari sugar and jaggery, locally known as gur or godd. Almost two-thirds of the total cane produced in India is used to make jiggery, while the rest goes to sugar factories. It is this jaggery that is a central ingredient in the celebration of the New Year or Gudi Padwa.
The crystallisation process of sugar gives us a byproduct known as molasses, a thick brown viscous liquid that can be used as a sweetener, or fermented into ethanol, an alcohol with many applications.
Ethanol is the base of IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) like whiskey, brandy, rum, vodka and gin. It is now also added to gasoline or petrol to run car engines, as it is a bio-fuel.
The other by-products of the sugar industry include bagasse, the starchy residue left after crushing the cane to extract juice, and press mud, the fine powder resulting from the crushing process.
The bagasse is used in-house as a fuel at the mill, or as raw material to manufacture paper. It can help save trees by providing an alternative to wood pulp.
The press mud is decomposed and used as a soil amendment or compost to boost soil fertility and water-holding capacity (WHC), both of which are critical for plant growth.
Excessive rainfall, as in the case of Goa (200 to 350 cm of rain per year) can lead to low sugar content.
GROWING SUGARCANE
Sugarcane is a tropical crop, and requires a hot climate (with temperatures ranging from 21°C to 27°C) with good rainfall of about 150 cm and high humidity for optimal growth. Excessive rainfall, as in the case of Goa (200 to 350 cm of rain per year) can lead to low sugar content.
The hot, dry winds, such as the ‘Loo’ in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) are detrimental to sugarcane. These conditions are absent in the Deccan plateau of South India, making the latter more suitable for sugar production.
An ideal sugarcane growing season includes a cool, dry winter during ripening and harvesting. In Goa, the temperature rarely drops below 18°C, aggravating the low sugar content.
Coastal plains on the western side of the Western Ghats, such as Goa, are generally avoided due to gusty monsoon winds that can damage crops.
In spite of all this, the crop was introduced on a commercial scale, and a sugar factory was established in 1967 because the quantity of sugar allotted to Goa from other states was insufficient to meet the needs of the residents when it was a Union Territory and sugar was a regulated item.
During the last few years, the Goa government has made attempts to wean the farmers away from the uneconomical sugarcane industry, now that sugar is freely available, and the concept of ‘levy sugar’ is unknown to the present generation.
The land and water resources can be put to more economically use, including cultivation of coconut for tender nuts and toddy; fruits and vegetables that have a ready market in Goa.
(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan).