Strategies to minimise impacts of processing existing soft cane varieties, and industry cost/benefit analysis

Many new cane varieties in the development pipeline have shown physical properties classified as soft, with some soft enough to cause processing problems in the factory.  A new cane variety takes approximately 10 years and $1 million dollars to develop.  Two previous QUT projects funded by Sugar Research Australia achieved a better understanding of fibre quality and earlier identification of soft varieties.

This project is focuses on identifying the best strategies to process existing soft canes in the factory.  Some soft canes such as SRA1 have such high sugar yield that a high financial return to the industry is expected if a cost-effective way to manage them in the factory can be found.  Experimentation has been carried out at the Isis Central raw sugar cane factory near Childers, including preparation of cane billets by a 4.5 tonne pilot scale shredder, and full scale factory trials with assessment of factory performance, fibre quality and mechanical properties of the prepared cane.