TEMPERATURE AND TIME OF STORAGE IMPACT ON REDUCING SUGAR ACUMULATIONS IN SUGAR BEET

Abstract

The quality of sugar beet determines its sugar output. Besides its initial quality and harvesting conditions, it is the storage conditions that influence significantly the technological quality of sugar beet. An important indicator regarding the quality of sugar beet is the content in reducing sugars. Throughout the production process, the reducing sugars are some of the forming sources of coloring substances in juices and syrups. The aim of this paper is to determine the effect of storage temperature and time upon the content variation in reducing sugars of the new beet- hybrids adapted to the new climate conditions of Europe, by analyzing statistically the correlations between storage time and temperature on the one hand, and the content variation in reducing substances on the other hand. The sugar beet was stored at different ranges of temperature of 2, 6, 10, 15 and 20 ^oC and determinations on the content in reducing sugars after 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 day- storage time were made. The method ICUMSA GS 2/9-6 2007 was used to determine the content in reducing sugars. The data obtained were statistically processed using the program Excel of Microsoft Office XP in order to get the values of correlation coefficients (r) between the content in reducing sugars and storage time depending on storage temperature. The analysis results show that there is a non-uniform variation in time of the content in reducing sugars throughout storage, with significant influence due to the heat level – storage of sugar beet.