Syngenta's beet tech may aid ailing sugar industry

Syngenta India, a leading agribusiness company, has introduced tropical sugar beet in the country after tying up with a few sugar cooperatives in Maharashtra.

Syngenta said on Wednesday the company's experiments of producing sugar and ethanol from sugar beet had been successful and the plant was ready to be replicated in Maharashtra and the rest of the country.

The company had tied up with Pune-based Vasantdada Sugar Institute (VSI) for the experiments, which took place over a decade. This move comes in the wake of falling sugar prices in global and domestic markets and the proposed blending of ethanol with petrol/diesel. To add to the industry's woes, the salinity of the land on which sugarcane is being cultivated is also increasing.

Syngenta India Managing Director Prakash Apte said that tropical sugar beet proved to be very economical and convenient for farmers as it could be grown on dry areas, where sugarcane cultivation is not possible. The crop can be harvested in five-and-a-half months allowing farmers to grow it as a second crop on the same land, thus increasing farm output and raising incomes.

Stressing the relevance of tropical beet for sugar production, Dilip Gokhale, global head of Biofuels Development for Syngenta International, said the tropical sugar beet developed by the company gives the same quantity of sugar per unit of land in half the time and with one third water compared with sugarcane. Gokhale said the input cost of Rs 10,000 an acre is also economical compared with the input cost of Rs 25,000 an acre, as sugar beet gives a recovery of 19-20 per cent against the recovery of 11-14 per cent for sugarcane across locations.

VSI President Shivajirao Deshmukh, who has worked closely with the project, said the sugar beet can yield up to 60 tonnes an acre per harvest but all the working has been based on a yield of 24 tonnes an acre. Deshmukh said the eco-friendly nature of sugar beet is also important as it grows in saline lands.

Syngenta is currently working on two pilot projects with two farmers' co-operatives, Harneshwar Agro Products, Power & Yeast India (HAPPY) in Baramati and Samarth Sakahari Sakhar Karkhana in Jalna in Maharashtra. While HAPPY has set up a bio-ethanol plant with a capacity of 50,000 litres a day, Samarth has been using sugar beet as an input for sugar production.

Deshmukh informed that another 10 sugar co-operatives in Pune district have shown willingness to run pilot for sugar beet application in sugar and ethanol production. Apte said the breakthrough is important for the company though it is not going to mean a huge business opportunity for Syngenta. He said the company has been importing the seeds for tropical sugar beet as producing it here is still not economically viable. The total seeds business for Syngenta is around Rs 100 crore a year, he indicated.