SUGAR 125 



local conditions of land tenure, and there is room for 

 considerable research in this direction, as well as in 

 thoroughly investigating the existing native methods of 

 making gur. Secondly, the canes are very inferior in 

 many respects, there being, indeed, indications that they 

 are inferior to those grown a few generations ago, many 

 better class canes having disappeared through red rot. 

 A wide field is opened for research in this direction also, 

 and, of the two, I consider it the more immediately 

 promising of useful results. 



The vast bulk of the sugar-cane in India is made into 

 jaggery or gur, but a taste for white sugar appears to 

 be arising. During recent years increasing quantities of 

 white sugar have been imported annually, until the figure 

 is at present not far off 1,000,000 tons. This rising 

 import may be due to the general increase in population, 

 the area under cane not having increased in any- 

 thing like the same degree, to the greater prosperity 

 throughout the country and its increasing wealth, and to 

 a gradual change of taste, especially in large towns, with 

 a desire for a purer product. It has, I think, been rightly 

 contended that India should produce its own sugar, while 

 optimists have prophesied a time when sugar may be 

 added to the list of Indian exports, such as wheat, cotton, 

 jute, and rice. With an idea of assisting in this direction 

 Government has recently entertained two specialists, one 

 in the United Provinces, to study the question of sugar 

 manufacture and machinery, and the other in Madras to 

 try and improve the canes grown. With the latter of 

 these I am at present concerned. 



There are three ways in which the problem of im- 

 proving North Indian canes can be approached. New 

 and better kinds may be imported from abroad, the local 

 canes may be improved by careful selection, and new 

 canes can be produced as seedlings. I have said enough 

 to show that the introduction of canes from other 

 countries is not a very promising direction of energy. 

 Selection, on the other hand, will be a very slow and 

 tedious process in a plant always propagated in a 

 vegetative manner, and in any case this method would be 

 too slow to meet the present crisis. This leaves us with 

 the third method only. 



