A tropical climate is necessary for the production or cultivation of sugarcane with minimum 24 in. of moisture annually. In growing regions, such as Mauritius, Dominican Republic, India, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, and Hawaii, sugarcane crop produces over 15 kg of cane per square meter of sunshine.

The cultivation of sugarcane is only possible in the tropical and subtropical areas with 6-7 months continuous supply of water through natural resources like rainfall or artificial resources like irrigation (George et al. 1917). The production of cane is only possible in the presence of plentiful sunshine and water supplies. This condi­tion provides good irrigation facilities to the countries where less availability of water supply is the major problem such as Egypt. Fig. 4.1 shows a general picture of sugarcane crops.

Sugarcane cultivation can be done by both mechanically and manually, i. e., by hand. Hand harvesting accounts for more than half of production. The process of hand harvesting involves the field to set on fire and burns dry leaves without harm­ing the stalks and roots. Harvesters then cut the cane manually by knives just above ground-level. The mechanical cutters cut the cane at the base of the stalk and take off the leaves, cut the cane into regular lengths and deposit it into a transporter. The structure of bagasse is shown in Fig. 4.2. From Fig. 4.2 it is observed that the bagasse mainly consists of cellulose and lignin (Fig. 4.2, b, respectively).

Figure 4.3a showed the morphology of the washed raw bagasse obtained from the sugarcane mill. The composition of this consists of a mixture of cellulosic short fibers and fine particles. The removal of lignin (Fig. 4.3b) makes the material fairly hard, coarse cellulosic particulates. The modified bagasse fibers shown in Fig. 4.3c display fluffy soft texture.