AGR203 agricultural Science farm mahineries

Agriculture

1. Sugarcane-gur manufacture, value addition and by-product utilization By STALIN L

2. Introduction Sugarcane is a major cash crop of India,which is grown for making three major products viz.sugar , jaggery ( gur ) and khandsari . Utilization of sugarcane for sugar production has increased over the past years and consequently, share for jaggery and khandsari has decreased. However, liking for jaggery by the people in general and rural mass in particular has not waned. It is used for preparation of several Ayurvedic medicines. It is cooling, diuretic, aperient, refreshing, improves throat conditions and acts as tonic. Sugar and khandsari are merely sweeteners but jaggery is a food material as well due to presence of nutrients needed for our body

3. Jaggery is called as Gur in India, Desi in Pakistan, Panela in Mexico, Rapadura in Brazil, Chancaca in Chile and Peru, Hakuru in Sri Lanka, and NaamTaanOi in Thailand (Sharon et al., 2013). Despite many medicinal and nutritive advantages of jaggery , it is a general feeling that there are higher post-harvest losses in cane used for jaggery as compared to sugar. However, loss of nutrients is negligible as compared to sugar.

4. Jaggery serves as safety valve for the cane growers in a situation when sugar mills are not in a position to consume all of their sugarcane. Thus it saves them from the losses. Due to this reason or the nutritive and medicinal aspects of jaggery ; this industry will continue forever with culti

5. System of jaggery production Jaggery manufacturing by the jaggery plant owner himself from his own cane or purchased from others and partly engaging his family labour ; Jaggery plant owner giving his plant on hiring without labour ; farmers bring their cane and rentals are hired on the basis of ( i ) weight of cane crushed (ii) weight of jaggery made or (iii) hours of crusher operation. Plant owner giving his plant on rent with labour and charging on above three bases.

6. Sugarcane crushing Sugarcane crushing or juice extraction is the first and foremost important unit operation in jaggery production. Juice extraction is directly related to jaggery recovery and productivity. Losses occurring at juice extraction level alone accounts for revenue loss of several million rupees per annum. Over the long usage, performance of crushers goes down due to wear and tear of crusher rollers and other parts. Farmers are not aware of reduction in juice extraction. Hence it is imperative that the crusher is tested and set at regular interval.

7. Juice settling After the juice is extracted, it should be thoroughly filtered preferably by a five-layer filter. Manual handling of juice should be avoided; instead, it should travel to the juice settling tankby means of pipes. This juice should again be filtered through a muslin cloth placed on the juice settlig tank.

8. Juice heating and clarification Juice from juice settling tank is pumped to the pans of jaggery making furnace. In this way, again manual juice handling is avoided. Juice is now heated upto 800C and before that mucilagenous extract from vegetative clarificants are added.

9. Juice boiling and concentration Normally sugarcane juice is boiled and concentrated over open pan jaggery furnaces. These furnaces are made by local artisans and have low thermal and heat utilization efficiency. However, some of the improved furnaces have also been developed but lots of improvement is still needed. Indian Institute of sugarcane Research, Lucknow has also developed a 2-pan and 3-pan furnace with better efficiency over the traditional ones.

10. Cooling, moulding and packaging Once the striking point is reached the concentrated sugarcane juice (slurry) is poured into a cooling pan made of wood. It is cooled here for some time and then is puddled using ladle. At the moment the shine of slurry goes off, it is ready for moulding . Jaggery is produced in many shapes and sizes. Most of these shapes pose problem in moulding , packaging, handling and distribution and many of them are not attractive in look. To overcome these problems, ICAR-Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research, Lucknow has developed jaggery moulding frames for producing jaggery in cubes of 1 inch weighing 20-22g each.

11. Value addition in jaggery Value added products of different kinds are gaining more popularity nowadays. They are liked for their taste as well as added nutrition, flavour etc. and are more profitable to the manufacturer. Although jaggery already contains substantial amount of nutrition yet its value addition may improve it nutritionally. Indian gooseberry ( Aonla ) can be added to jaggery for enriching it with vitamin C (Anwar et al., 2009). The taste of such jaggery is also good. A complete process technology has been developed (Anwar et al., 2011).

12. Thank you