History of Sugar

After Brazil (22%), India (14%) is the largest sugar producer in the world and it leads in sugarcane production. However, if traditional sugars such as Khandsari (unrefined raw sugar) and Gurh (jaggery) and Shakkar sucrose) are included in the fold, then India would be the largest overall producer of sugar.

Sugars

Sugarcane

Sugarcane, or sugar cane, is one (Saccharum officinarum) of the several species of tall perennial true grasses of the genus Saccharum, tribe Andropogoneae, native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia and Melanesia, and used for sugar production.

Sugarcane from India

According to the latest data, sugarcane is the world’s third most valuable crop after cereals and rice, and occupies 26,942,686 hectares of land across the globe.

Farmers bringing sugarcane to sugar mills in Western UP

History of Sugar

Evidence from plant remnants and DNA suggests that sugarcane evolved in South East Asia. The extraction of sugar cane juice from the sugarcane plant; and, the subsequent domestication of the plant in tropical Southeast Asia many thousands of years ago (a firm date is unknown). The invention of manufacture of cane sugar granules from the sugarcane juice in India a little over two thousand years ago, followed by improvements in refining the crystal granules in India in the early centuries A.D.

History of Sugar

In 510 BC Darius, the Persian Emperor, arrived to conquer the Indian sub-continent and found that the people used a substance from a plant to sweeten their food.Until then the Persian people had used honey to sweeten food, and so they called sugar cane ‘the reed which gives honey without bees’.

Persian traders bringing goods from India

In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great conquered parts of Western Asia and took with him what he called the ‘sacred reed’. His admiral Nearchos sailed from the Persian Gulf along the Indus River, where the sugar canes grew side by side, swaying in the wind. Nearchos tasted the cane, and exclaimed, “Indian canes that make sugar without bees.” Greek physician Dioscorides in the 1st century (AD) wrote: "There is a kind of coalesced honey called sakcharon [i.e. sugar] found in reeds in India  similar in consistency to salt and brittle enough to be broken between the teeth like salt.

Greek bakers using sugar from India

Before long Ancient Greece, and then Rome, began to import sugar as a luxury product and a medicine. Pliny the Elder, a 1st century (AD) Roman, also described sugar as medicinal: "Sugar is made in Arabia as well, but Indian sugar is better. It is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut. Sugar is used only for medical purposes."

Arab Alchemists refining sugar from unrefined sugar from India

In the seventh century BC, the Arabs invaded Persia and as part of their loot they took the sugar cane plant.Through invasions, conquests and increased trading links with other countries, sugar cane reached a great number of places, including Egypt, Rhodes, Cyprus, North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia), Southern Spain and Syria.

Indian sailors carried sugar by various trade routes. Traveling Buddhist monks brought sugar crystallization methods to China. During the reign of Harsha (r. 606–647) in North India, Indian envoys in Tang China taught sugarcane cultivation methods during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649). Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 AD, for obtaining technology for sugar-refining.

Traditional sugar production in Punjab

Types of Sugars in India 

Gurh 

Gurh or Jaggery is a traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar consumed in Northern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, and UP.  It is a concentrated produce of sugar cane juice without the separation of the molasses and crystals, and can vary from golden brown to dark brown in color. It contains up to 50% sucrose, up to 20% invert sugars, and up to 20% moisture, with the remainder made up of other insoluble matter, such as wood ash, proteins, and spices.

Gurh - Jaggery

Shakkar 

Shakkar is the unrefined ancient Indian sugar in lumpy powder format made from sugarcane juice. It is produced as jaggery but in a powdered formation. This kind of sugar is used in India for traditional sweets.

Shakkar - Sucrose

Mishri

Mishri is relatively large sugar crystals of sugar. Mishri is formed by allowing a supersaturated solution of sugar and water to crystallize onto a surface suitable for crystal nucleation, such as a string. In Persia, the sugar crystals are flovored and used as candies.

Mishri - Sugar Crystals from India

Khandsari

Khandsar or Khand is a basic raw crystalline sugar, developed in India, that has been separated from most of the molasses. Khandsari, varies in colour from golden yellow to brown and contains between 94 and 98% sucrose.

Khand or Khandsari

Refined Sugar 

The refined sugar is mass produced in large scale sugar mills with fine crystals that are clear as a result of the refining process by adding phosphoric acid and calcium hydroxide, which combine to precipitate calcium phosphate.

Refined White Sugar

How Sugar reached the West

For thousands of years, people in Europe have loved sweet tastes. Before sugar became known to them, the Europeans used honey and dates for their sweet tastes.

Sugar in Europe

The extraction from sugarcane and purifying technology were developed in Northern India. After domestication, its cultivation spread rapidly to Southeast Asia and southern China. India, where the process of refining sugarcane juice into granulated crystals was developed, was often visited by imperial convoys from China to learn about cultivation and sugar refining. By the sixth century AD, sugar cultivation and processing had reached Persia; and, from there that knowledge was brought into the Mediterranean by the Arab expansion.

The Arabs brought sugar to the western Mediterranean region. They cultivated sugar canes in southern Spain and Sicily after occupying these areas. In the Middle Ages, Venice was Europe's main importer and exporter of sugar. Raw cane sugar was imported from India and refined in Venice before being exported to the rest of Europe.

Sugar plantations in Carribean islands

Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest in the fifteenth century carried sugar to the Americas. In 1493, on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus carried sugarcane seedlings to the New World, in particular Hispaniola.

English Tea with sugar from India

Resources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar
3. http://www.indiansugar.com
4. http://business.mapsofindia.com/sugar-industry
5. http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/history-sugar-food-nobody-needs-everyone-craves
6. http://www.dansukker.co.uk/uk/about-sugar/how-sugar-arrived-in-europe.aspx