Sugar beet

Sugar Beet - Beta vulgaris

Up until the High Middle Ages, the only sweetener available in Germany was honey. Beets as source for sugar have been used since the 19th century. Sugar beet now accounts for nearly half of the worldwide sugar production. In 2007, sugar beets were cultivated on 1.7 million hectares, producing 17 million tons of white sugar. 

Aside from Germany, where sugar beet cultivation extended on 390,000 hectares in 2007, the main producers in the European Union were France and Poland.

Crystal Sugar and Other Products

With their ten-year average sugar content of 17.5 percent, sugar beets provide the raw material for the production of crystal sugar. The by-products are sugar beet foliage and molasses. Sugar beet foliage is either used as green fertilizer or as cattle feed. The sugar content of the molasses is used for industrial alcohol production, as a culture medium for yeast production and also as livestock feed. Sugar beet more and more comes into focus for bioethanol production because of its good productivity per unit area; the good methane yields per hectare have also come to attract attention to sugar beet tailings as quick-fermenting substrate for biogas production.

New market segments are opened by the so-called "industrial beet", i.e. sugar from beets used for industrial purposes like pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical preparations (human and veterinary medicine), chemicals and synthetics (thermoplastics), citric and amino acids (animal feed industry) and fermentation products (yeast production).

Success Through Single Seed and High Sugar Content

The sugar content of old varieties was very low. From the 1930ies, when sugar beet yielded some 5 tons of sugar per hectare, yields have nearly doubled to 9.9 tons per hectare in 2007. Moreover, the multigerm character of sugar beet made cultivation extremely cumbersome, since plants had to be thinned by manual hacking. In 1966, the first monogerm hybrid variety has been registered in Germany. Monogerm varieties generate "seeds" (fruit) with only one true seed, thus avoiding the arduous task of thinning.

Intensified sugar beet cultivation also gave rise to increasing infestation pressure. Plant breeders responded with stringent resistance breeding, crowned by success: in 1983 the first rizomania tolerant variety was registered, in 1998 the first nematode resistant variety, in 2001 the first rhizoctonia resistant sugar beet variety. Today, farmers can choose between a multitude of sugar beet varieties with double or even multiple resistance to pests and diseases, depending on the relevant local and agronomical conditions.

Demands to an Energy Plant

Yields of 15 tons of sugar per hectare are expected to be possible within a few years. Breeding efforts also focus on resistance and processing quality. Particular attention is paid to the demands to sugar beet in its new role as energy plant. Biotechnology can play an important role for achieving these objectives.