Influence of Harvest Season and Maturation of Different Sugarcane (Saccharum Spp.) Cultivars on the Chemical Composition of Alembic Brazilian Sugarcane Spirit

Abstract

Contrary to the ethanol industrial production, the quality and composition of sugar cane as raw material for the production of alembic cachaça have until now not been completely addressed. This work evaluated the influence of five different sugarcane cultivars and degree of maturation over the physicochemical composition of cachaça produced under strict controlled conditions. Three harvest seasons were used in order to obtain different stages of maturation. The sugarcane quality was assessed by the juice brix, sugarcane POL, reducing sugars, and purity. The cultivars quality did not differ within each harvest stage. However, significant quality differences were observed among sugarcane harvested in June and the other harvest months, particularly on reducing sugar content. This indicates different stages of sugarcane maturation. The 45 samples of cachaça produced from those sugarcanes were submitted to physicochemical and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) qualitative analysis. The GC/MS composition pattern showed that the type of cultivar did not alter the composition of the cachaça at the same harvest stage. Otherwise, the production of acetic acid, ethyl lactate and nbutyl alcohol was higher in the first harvest (June) when compared to the others. The results from sugar cane quality and GC/MS when submitted to principal component analysis (PCA) showed consistently the separation between the groups of cachaça produced in the three seasons, indicating the influence of sugarcane ripening over the cachaça composition.

Agroindustrial performance and phenotypic parameters evaluation of sugarcane varieties in different crop seasons

“…In the second harvest the amplitude was higher, being the variety CTC7 the one to present the highest average (Table 4). Fernandes et al (2017) and Ftwi et al (2017) also obtained great variation among the varieties in the conduction of different crop seasons for this trait when evaluating the genotypes x environments interaction in sugarcane. Means followed by the same lowercase letter in the column and upper case in the row belong to the same group, according to the Scott and Knott (1974) criterion at 5% probability (p <0.05).…”

“…Ferreira et al (2005) when studying the repeatability and predictability for industrial variables in sugarcane also obtained high values for this parameter for most of the assessed traits. According to Fernandes et al (2017), high values for the repeatability coefficient is indicative of the performance regularity of the genotypes in the different crop seasons. Resende (2002) consider that values above 80%, for the coefficient of determination parameter, are considered appropriate for the selection of genotypes.…”

Cachaça Production in Brazil and its Main Contaminant (Ethyl Carbamate)

“…The choice of sugarcane variety is the most important and least costly step in cachaça production. A study that evaluated sugarcane varieties, harvested at different times for cachaça production, showed that sugarcane variety influences the chemical composition of sugarcane juice and subsequently the product (Fernandes et al, 2017).…”

Relevance of Ethyl Lactate Among the Cachaça Esters

“…There are no reports of intentional inoculation of lactic acid bacteria to cachaça fermentation must and this practice is not foreseen in its production process. However, ethyl lactate has already been identified in samples of cachaça (Nascimento et al, 2008;Fernandes et al, 2017;Karp et al, 2019). So far, however, the occurrence of this ester has been interpreted only as an indicator of failures in the cleaning of sugarcane juice, which should be remedied with the technological advancement of the sector.…”