Abstract: The prevention of post harvest deterioration of sugarcane is of prime importance from the economy of growers as well as sugar industry point of view because the price of cane is paid not only on weight basis but also on quality basis i.e. the percentage of sugar in cane. It has seen that microbially induced sucrose inversion (MISI) leads to substantial loss in a sugar mill. It is envisaged that post harvest deterioration due to microbially induced sucrose inversion can be prevented / controlled by use of carefully selected bacteriocide.

Keeping this in view Authors in present study have discussed the effect of these four nos. of chemicals namely Dithiocarbamate, Benzal konium chloride, Sodium metasilicate, Calcium hypo chlorite to assess their respective efficiencies in controlling the deterioration of   sugarcane.  The results of experiments prove that Dithiocarbamate is the most  effective chemical for arresting post harvest deterioration  of sugarcane and the another chemical, Sodium metasilicate was found to be least effective for controlling  post harvest deterioration  of sugarcane

 

Key words: post harvest deterioration, microbially induced sucrose inversion (MISI), bacteriocide, prevention.