■ How Maharashtra overtook UP to re-emerge as top sugar producer-
✓After a five-year gap, Maharashtra has overtaken Uttar Pradesh (UP) to regain its position as India’s top sugar producer.
✓Maharashtra, expects the state’s output for the 2021-22 crushing year (October-September) at 138 lakh tonnes (lt). That is an all-time-high, beating the previous 107.21 lt of 2018-19.
● Factors for record production:
✓The bountiful rainfall Maharashtra has been receiving since the 2019 southwest monsoon season (June-September).
✓Higher yields from farmers taking extra care of their crop.
✓A huge jump in “unregistered” cane cultivation.
● Reasons for UP’s sugar production declining:
✓Rise in diversion of sugar from cane crushed by mills for making ethanol
✓UP has, in fact, become India’s largest ethanol producer, while also achieving the highest blending-in-petrol ratio among all states.
✓Crop loss from excess rains and water-logging in many low-lying cane-growing areas of eastern UP.
✓About 87% of UP’s cane area being planted under a single variety, Co-0238.
✓While that variety, developed by Bakshi Ram, helped significantly boost cane yields and sugar recovery in UP from 2013-14, it has become susceptible to red rot fungal disease.
