Interesting facts about sugar beets

Interesting facts about sugar beets

Sugar beet is a new culture the age of which numbers only 200 years. Sugar beets are valuable forecrop for many agricultural crops; they increase total fertility of the field crop rotation.

The history of origin of sugar beet tells us that it was developed from the wild forms growing on the Mediterranean coast. However the sugar beet we know is the result of painstaking work of crop breeders. 1747 became the cope stone when German scientist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf discovered that sugar beets also contained sugar which had been previously made of sugar cane. From this point on Franz Karl Achard, Marggraf's student started the research in selection, the techniques of planting and processing of the sugar beets into sugar. From the feed beets he selected white forms. The sample with white pulp and white skin which top just pointed upwards appeared to be the most saccharic. In 1802 Achard got the first yield of purely white sugar beet with 5-7% of sugar content later named Silesian white, after the locality it had been planted in. From 1 ton of root crop he received only 30 kg of sugar. Prussians were the first to pay attention to Marggraf's invention and in just a couple of years beet sugar refining would spread in France to become one of Napoleon's economical priorities.

In Ukraine sugar beet planting started in the 1820-ies. In 1840 in the town of Smila count O. Bobrynskyi built a sugar producing plant having thus given rise to intense development of sugar beet planting in Ukraine. By the end of the XIX c. there were 280 sugar making plants in the country; the arable lands under sugar beer reached as much as 500 thousand desiatinas (546 K ha). In 1913 the beets were planted on the acreage of 676 K ha, the croppage equalled 11.3 Mio t, the yield was 16.8 t/ha and the sugar consumption per capita - 8.1 kg.

Today sugar beet is one of the most important industrial crops spread all over the world and being the raw material for sugar refining industry. World production of sugar exceeds 168 Mio t, out of which ca. 69% is received from sugar cane, and 31% - from sugar beet. Sugar beet is planted in many countries of the world. Approximately 80 % of all sugar beet arable acreage and gross yield accrues to Europe. Major sugar beet acreages locate in Ukraine, Russia, France, the USA, Poland, Germany, Italy, Romania, Czech, Slovakia, England, Belgium and Hungary.