Brownsugarexporter.com - Sugar, any of numerous sweet,
colourless, water-soluble compounds present in the sap of seed plants and the
milk of mammals and making up the simplest group of carbohydrates. (See also
carbohydrate.) The most common sugar is sucrose, a crystalline tabletop and
industrial sweetener used in foods and beverages.
As a
chemical term, “sugar” usually refers to all carbohydrates of the general formula
Cn(H2O)n. Sucrose is a disaccharide, or double sugar, being composed of one
molecule ofglucose linked to one molecule of fructose. Because one molecule of
water (H2O) is lost in the condensation reaction linking glucose to fructose,
sucrose is represented by the formula C12H22O11 (following the general formula
Cn[H2O]n - 1).
Sucrose is
found in almost all plants, but it occurs at concentrations high enough for
economic recovery only in sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) and sugar beets
(Beta vulgaris). The former is a giant grass growing in tropical and
subtropical areas; the latter is a root crop growing in temperate zones. Sugarcane ranges from 7 to 18 percent sugar by weight, while sugar
beets are from 8 to 22 percent sugar by weight. Sucrose from either source (or
from two relatively minor sources, the sugar maple tree and the date palm) is
the same molecule, yielding 3.94 calories per gram as do all carbohydrates.
Differences in sugar products come from other components isolated with sucrose.
The first
cultivated sugar crop was sugarcane, developed from wild varieties in the East
Indies—probably New Guinea. The sugar beet was developed as a crop in Europe in
the 19th century during the Napoleonic Wars, when France sought an alternate homegrown
source of sugar in order to save its ships from running blockades to sugarcane
sources in the Caribbean. Sugarcane, once harvested, cannot be stored because
of sucrose decomposition. For this reason, cane sugar is generally produced in
two stages, manufacture of raw sugartaking place in the cane-growing areas and
refining into food products occurring in the sugar-consuming countries. Sugar
beets, on the other hand, can be stored and are therefore generally processed
in one stage into white sugar. (BD)