As noted above, sugar mills also employ the clarified syrup for ethanol produc­tion. The equivalent of this syrup in the sugar production plants using sugar beet, the dense juice, is also used for bioethanol production. On the other hand, a spe­cial type of syrup called high test molasses is employed for ethanol production especially in the distilleries of the southern United States. These types of molas­ses are usually produced when the sugar prices are very depressed in the world market, thus the sugar mills simply concentrate the cane juice to obtain syrup, to

which acid is added in order to partially hydrolyze the sucrose and avoid its crys­tallization (Murtagh, 1995). In this way, the sugar mills commercialize the high test molasses as a way of exploiting the sugarcane under low sugar price condi­tions. High test molasses contains about 70% sugars and 80° Brix that indicates high sugar content compared to molasses. Therefore, these types of materials, as well as the syrups, require the addition of higher amounts of nitrogen and phos­phates when they are used to prepare the cultivation media for ethanolic fermen­tation using yeasts. Moreover, the pantothenate content of these molasses is low (Murtagh, 1995).