Year : 1998.

As per the protocol issued by INAGROSA, of South Africa, two field experiments on farmers field were taken to know the effect of time of spray of kadostim as growth ripeners, whose chemical name is not furnished by them. The Kadostim spray was taken at two different phase of crushing seasons ie early and late crushing season @ 1.0 lit/ha on sugarcane variety CoC 671. These experiments were laid out in Latin square design with six treatments. Early and late crushing experiments were harvested in the last week of December and April respectively. The spraying times viz. 17 weeks before harvest (WBH), (T1), 13 WBH (T2), 9 WBH (T3), 6 WBH (T4), 3 WBH (T5) and untreated until (T6) were formed as treatments for these two experiments. The observations recorded on these two experiments are as presented in Table 20 and 20a.

Results and Discussion

(1) Early Crush

Data presented in tables indicated that application of Kadostim @1000 ml/ha enhanced the Brix%, Pol%. However it failed to produce significant results on these   arameters and pol% in cane impovement was 2.24% when spraying was done 13 weeks before harvest. Mean cane weight, CCS percent and fibre were unaffected by the time of spray and Kadostim application. It is worth noting that purity percent was significantly higher due to spraying of Kadostim at 9 weeks before harvest (6.72%) over untreated control. Therefore spraying of Kadostim enhanced the purity % in cane and it has no affect on mean cane weight fibre percent during early part of crush. However while experimenting, it was observed that Kadostim spray at 17 weeks before harvest showed sideshoot development at the top portion of the cane.

(2) Late Crush

Kadostim spray at later part of the crushing season showed that Kadostim @ 1000 ml/ha improved brix, pol, purity and CCS percentage. The max. pol percentage increased to the tune of 48% was noticed when Kadostim sprayed 9 weeks before harvest. Similarly purity and CCS% of cane were also improved to the extent of 2.28 and 1.55 percent respectively. The improvement in pol % cane was mainly attributed to enhance the purity percentage. Other parameters like Mean cane weight, Fibre % were not much affected. While experimenting, it was observed that the heavy side shoots sprouting found especially in 17 weeks before spraying. However all the parameters were found to be nonsignificant.`

Table 20. Effect of Kadostim sparying time (@ 1000 ml/ha) on sugarcane quality attributes (1998).

Table 20a. Effect of Kadostim spraying time (@ 1000 ml/ha) on sugarcane (Cv. CoC 671) quality attributes (1998).