10/15/2008 13h50
With budget of US$ 18.2 million CTC launches three projects for sugar cane
Gazeta Mercantil - 10/15/2008
The most important research and technology center in the sugar and alcohol sector, the Centro de Technologia Canavieira - CTC (Center of Sugarcane Technology) announced yesterday, in Ribeirão Preto, three projects to increase productivity and profitability of sugarcane in Brazil. First there was the launching and liberation for planting of fourth generation varieties of sugarcane, with three new cultivars. Secondly there was the announcement of the opening, in February of 2009 in Piracicaba (SP), of a new "bio plant" of seedlings, a new high technology project that will expand the current production from 600 thousand to 5 million seedlings a year. Finally, the research institute communicated that it will start the CTCSat program this year, which will map, in five years' time, through satellite images, a total of 3.2 million hectares of sugarcane crops. With 177 member and an annual budget of R$ 40 million (US$ 18.2 million), CTC has not diminished its investments, even with the lower remuneration received by the companies of the sector in the last two harvests. "Despite the crisis, the members know the importance of this investment and kept the contributions", says CTC's managing director Nilson Zaramella Boeta. "The researches have to continue or everything that has been done this far will be lost." The members that have joined the "Soil and Environmental Productions Letters" program will receive free information about their cultivation areas. "The new sugarcane varieties (16, 17 and 18) come to fill a gap in the sugar and alcohol area, because all of them have as a marking characteristic the quick production allied to high saccharose content", says CTC director of research and development Tadeu Andrade. Besides, the new materials have high fiber contents, which contribute to increase the yield of the co-generation of energy from bagasse. The precocity of the sugarcane helps anticipate the beginning of the harvest and, consequently, contributes to reduce the price oscillations of alcohol in the period between harvests. From 2009 on, with the support of a new Laboratory of Biotechnology and of the technology of "molecular markers", CTC will start selecting sugarcane varieties based on DNA, for use in different production environments.
