What do you know about this hyperactive of the tropics?

She has come a long way, this giant grass from the deep forests of Papua New Guinea. Over the millennia, it is first cultivated before hitting the road. Over the course of trade, it spreads first in Asia. Néarque, commander of the fleet of Alexander the Great, will bring it back from its campaigns to the Indus.

While on land roads, caravanners make the cane sugar trade in the form of crystallized breads for centuries. The trip resumes more beautiful during the Arab expansion in the Mediterranean basin, to Spain. When Christopher Columbus leaves to discover the new world, the cane follows the movement, sets out in Brazil before migrating to Martinique, over the sinister slave economy.

An asset for green chemistry

It is now cultivated in more than a hundred countries around the tropics, to the point of having become a star in the global food industry sector, since it produces four -fifths of the sugar that we consume. Because under the criminal bark of the sizes of the plant, it is a marrow capable of storing sugar – and other molecules with promising potential for green chemistry – which can be discovered. A hyperactive plant therefore, and a large consumer of water. But also capable of absorbing much more carbon dioxide and solar light than many others. The sugar cane therefore did not say its last word.