Lynne Wong's PhD thesis

The trial was planted in 2000 and grown under the same conditions as in the North of
Mauritius (in the area called Nouvelle Industrie – see Fig 1.1). The experimental design
was a split-split plot with three replicates. The main plots consisted of three harvest dates
(July, September and November – all plots were of 52 weeks of age at harvest of ratoon
crop), the sub-plots represented the ten cane varieties and the sub-sub-plots, represented
the three sampling dates for the Plant Physiology Department. The plot consisted of six
rows, each of which was 10 m long. The samples were removed during the second half of
July 2003 for four cane varieties (early maturing variety M 1557/70, middle-to-late
maturing varieties R 579 and M 1400/86, and late maturing variety R 570). The ages of
the crops at the time of sampling were: 52, 44 and 36 weeks (after the last harvest in 2002).
The samples removed for fibre extraction consisted of four stalks each from each of the
three replicates with all their attached dry and green leaves. Additional cane tops and dry
leaves for each sample were collected since a trial series of cane samples harvested and
processed previously, in 2001, had shown that the fibres extracted from cane tops and dry
leaves were insufficient for the subsequent Brix-free water determination. The cane
samples harvested are detailed in Table 3.3 and the cane varieties chosen are illustrated in
Fig 3.4.
The cane variety R 570 which formed part of the trial series grown at Mon Trésor (Fig 1.1)
and harvested in 2001 was included in this work for comparison with the R 570 grown at
Nouvelle Industrie and harvested in 2003, to see the effect of different growing regions on
the subsequent Brix-free water values.
Table 3.3. Cane samples harvested for fibre extraction.
Variety
Maturing
characteristic
Age/weeks
Year of
harvest
Growing
site
R 570 late 37, 44 and 52 2001 Mon Trésor
R 579
R 570
M 1557/70
M 1400/86
middle-to-late
late
early
middle-to-late
36, 44 and 52 2003
Nouvelle
Industrie
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