History of sugar cane

The generic name Saccharum was given to sugar cane By Linnaeus in 1753. When the Arabs introduced sugar cane from India via Persia to the Middle East, the word became Sakkar or Sukkar. Possibly the first mention of ‘sugar’ as a commercial product occurs in95 AD in ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei’ (Guide Book to the Red Sea), where the quote ‘Exported commonly … honey reeds which called sakchar’ made by a merchant.

When the Greeks introduced it from Asia Minor it became known in ancient Greece as Sakchar or Sakcharon.

The first recorded use of sugar came leads is from New Guinea in 8000 BC. The peoples of the South Pacific Islands undertook long sea voyages and among the foods which they carried was sugar cane which was thus spread throughout the Pacific and from there to India and Southeast Asia.

Sugar cane

Cane sugar first achieved dominance on the subcontinent of India more that 2500 years ago, and it was in that country and China that commercial sugar was first produced from sugar cane. At about that time sugar cane was spread to Persia, Egypt and countries on the borders of the Mediterranean sea.

The Indian started processing and boiling cane to crystallize sugar around 300 AD and by 540 AD the Persian had learnt the art of sugar making.

It was not until the early eighteenth century, however, that sugar began to become widely used in Western Europe. Sugar cane was unknown in the New World until Columbus introduced it on his second voyage in 1493.
History of sugar cane