Saccharum officinarum

Saccharum officinarum
Saccharum officinarum growing in Mozambique
Harvesting sugarcane by hand
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Clade: Commelinids
Order: Poales
Family: Poaceae
Subfamily: Panicoideae
Genus: Saccharum
Species:
S. officinarum
Binomial name
Saccharum officinarum

Saccharum officinarum is a large, strong-growing species of grass in the sugarcane genus. Its stout stalks are rich in sucrose, a disaccharide sugar which accumulates in the stalk internodes. It originated in New Guinea,[1] and is now cultivated in tropical and subtropical countries worldwide for the production of sugar, ethanol and other products.

S. officinarum is one of the most productive and most intensively cultivated kinds of sugarcane. It can interbreed with other sugarcane species, such as S. sinense and S. barberi. The major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids.[2] About 70% of the sugar produced worldwide comes from S. officinarum and hybrids using this species.[3]

  1. ^ In New Guinea, according to sources cited by Christian Daniels in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 6.3, p. 129ff; Warner, John N. “Sugar Cane: An Indigenous Papuan Cultigen.” Ethnology, vol. 1, no. 4, 1962, pp. 405–11.
  2. ^ Vilela, Mariane de Mendonça; Del Bem, Luiz Eduardo; Van Sluys, Marie-Anne; de Setta, Nathalia; Kitajima, João Paulo; Cruz, Guilherme Marcelo Queiroga; Sforça, Danilo Augusto; de Souza, Anete Pereira; Ferreira, Paulo Cavalcanti Gomes; Grativol, Clícia; Cardoso-Silva, Claudio Benicio (2017). "Analysis of Three Sugarcane Homo/Homeologous Regions Suggests Independent Polyploidization Events of Saccharum officinarum and Saccharum spontaneum". Genome Biology and Evolution. 9 (2). Oxford University Press: 266–278. doi:10.1093/gbe/evw293. PMC 5381655. PMID 28082603.
  3. ^ "Plants & Fungi: Saccharum officinarum (sugar cane)". Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 2012-06-04.