Development of a New Model to Estimate the Technical Quality of Sugar Beet in the Semi – Arid Climate

Abstract

Determination of the amount of sugar in sugar beet is usually accomplished by polarimetric method in sugar industry. This method is not accurate due to impurities such as sodium, potassium and amino-nitrogen that are present and might cause some errors in the evaluation of the technical quality of sugar beet. In this research, 7309 samples of sugar beet from two semi- arid county, Isfahan and Chahar-Mahaal, were analyzed by Betalyzer for two consecutive years. Comparison between the experimental results and the estimated one based on the Reinefeld model showed that this model couldn't successfully estimate the amount of sugar loss in molasses for semi-arid areas. Therefore a new model based on the obtained results has been developed and was suggested for this type of climatic condition, especially for samples with 13.5-17.5% sugar content.