Impact of salinity on quality attributes of harvested stored cane

About 1.25 million hectares of land in Uttar Pradesh (Sub-tropical) is affected by saline soil. Saline soil affects water uptake by the plant which in turn affects every aspects of plant growth and maturation. Further, in most of the sub-tropical parts of India sugarcane cut-to-crush extends from 4–7 days, however, due to stale cane processing, the post-harvest sugar losses are quite alarming in this part of the country and these losses are found to be comparatively high in saline soil area. The study was undertaken to evaluate the post-harvest sugar losses in terms of purity coefficient, sucrose percentage, pH and reducing sugar of juice in ten sugarcane varieties viz; CoSe 01424, CoSe 01434, CoSe 03234, CoS 03251, CoS 03261, CoS 07250, CoS 95255, CoSe 96436, CoS 97261 and UP 49 grown under normal (0.4 dsm-1) and saline (8.0 dsm-1) soil conditions. The cane from all the varieties were harvested at maturity and kept for 96 hours of staling. The quality attributes of 96 hours harvested stored cane were evaluated. Results revealed that purity coefficient, sucrose percentage and pH of cane juice were decreased with staling hours in both normal and saline cane, however, the degree of losses were relatively higher in canes from saline conditions as compared to the normal. Reducing sugar percent increased more in juice of canes obtained from saline stress conditions than of normal. The study concludes that the canes obtained from saline conditions should be processed early to reduce the impact of deterioration and to increase sugar recovery.