Use of ripeners in sugar cane

Introduction

Sugarcane in the Cauca River Valley grows in different climatic and management conditions that directly affect the maturation of the crop. In this sense, abundant rainfall and high night temperatures, as well as excess nitrogen fertilization and late irrigation, promote increases in the growth and respiration rates of the plant in the maturation stage. These unfavorable factors for natural ripening reduce the potential amount of sucrose that could be stored in the internodes (Unigarro & Villegas, 2020).

Since it is not possible to always ensure ideal conditions for ripening, since these depend on the spatial and temporal variability of the area where the crops are located, it is necessary to use ripening products in order to reduce respiratory expenditure, regulate growth. of the plant and promote the translocation of carbohydrates to the internodes. Therefore, an ideal sugarcane ripener would be one that improves sucrose content quickly, consistently and economically, without damaging the crop, its next cycle or neighboring crops, in addition to having low toxicity for mammals. and a short environmental half-life (Moore & Botha, 2015).

Below, the evolution of the use of ripeners in sugarcane is summarized and different technical aspects are explained such as variety, type of ingredient, dose, discharge volume and the time elapsed between application and harvest, which They affect the amount of additional sucrose that can be recovered at the time of cutting. With this, this document seeks to provide tools to make decisions with technical criteria that allow maximizing sugar production in the environmental conditions of the Cauca River valley.