Effect of Urea and Cocoly® Fertilizers on Production of Sugarcane (Saccharum officianarum L.), Kenana Sugar Scheme, White Nile State, Sudan

Sugarcane (Saccharum officianarum L.)is a tropical giant perennial grass belongs to the family poaceae that includes cereal crops such as maize, wheat, rice, sorghum and many forage crops (Jannoo et al., 2007). It is cultivated for the production of sugar and as a source of bio-energy due to its phenomenal dry matter production. Demand for sugar and bio-energy is increasing day by day but its present production is not enough to meet the increasing demand. The average production is much lower than the achievable potential of the existing sugarcane varieties (Ayoub et al., 1999).

Sugarcane is one of the most important economic crops and the largest sugar crop in the world. The main sugarcane growing countries include: India, Brazil, Cuba, Australia and Mexico (Morais et al., 2015). According to the estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the crop was cultivated on about 23.8 million hectares, in more than 90 countries, with a worldwide harvest of 1.69 billion tons (FAO 2010). Sudan is the third-largest producer of sugar in Africa (Hassan, 2008). The country’sestimated production is about 800 000 t, which is equivalent to 7.5 % of the African continent (Hassan, 2008). In Sudan, sugarcane is grown in two seasons, summer and winter (Ibrahim, 1978).

Sugarcane has been recognized as a crop with high potential that can successfully meet future sugar requirements (Hamid and Dagash, 2014). The soaring world’ssugar prices in the late 1950 motivated the Government of Sudan to plan establishment of sugar industry to ease pressure on its foreign exchange reserves and create jobs and employment within a new industrial environment (Ali, 1986). El Guneid Sugar Factory was commissioned in 1962 and the New Halfa Sugar Factory in 1964, each with a sugar production capacity of 60,000 tons per annum. The two projects were established to meet the domestic demand levels that were estimated at 120,000 tons per annum. In the early seventies the Sudanese Government designed a new plan to meet the growing demand for sugar. Therefore, Three major sugar plantations were successfully constructed, Assalaya, NorthWest Sennar and Kenana (Ali, 1986). The Sudanese sugar industry started in the early 1960s. Currently, the production capacity, designed for the existing five sugar factories, is 755,000 tons (Hussein, 2013).

Kenana Sugar Company (KSC) was established in 1979 as a private (integrated) company and started production activity in 1984 (El Nazir and Desai, 2014). While the remaining four sugar plantations were administered by the Sudanese Sugar Company (SSC), a publicly owned enterprise(Ibrahim 2020). Sugarcane production in Kenana Sugar Scheme was supported by establishment of the research and development station in order to increasing the productivity of sugarcane through the effectively fertilization programs. The soil at Kenana scheme is a heavy clay soil “vertisols” (Ali, 1986). Besides, the clay contents in these soils which range between 60 and 70% (Blokhuis, 1993), these soil are classified under Dinder series (Abdulla et al., 1985).

Sustainable nutrient management is considered an integral part of sugarcane production (Schroeder et al., 2005). Use of fertilizers play an important role in increasing sugarcane yield (Nazir et al., 2013).

Proper fertilization is an important management function in sugarcane production (Hasan et al., 2021). Balanced application of different nutrient levels produced thicker cane, longer height and higher millable canes and high cane yield (Junejo et al., 2014). The increasing of cane yield production found followed the trend: millable cane, cane height and cane thickness (Chohan et al., 2013).

The primary nutrients Nitrogen, Phosphor and Potassium are those that plant need in large quantities and are necessary for all living cells and essential for the formation of chlorophyll (Ali and Hamid, 2012). Cocoly® NPK fertilizer, contribute to the increase in sugarcane yields by providing direct nutritional value and improving the use efficiency of other essential nutrients (El Hag et al., 2006). The most important fertilizers used in Kenana Sugar Scheme, are nitrogenous fertilizers Urea and Ammonium Sulphate. and phosphorus fertilizers, Di Ammonium Phosphate (Hamid and Dagash, 2014). 1.1 Objectives of the study: Main objective is to study the effect of Urea and Cocoly® fertilizers on sugarcane production in the heavy Clay soils of Kenana sugar scheme.

Specific objective is to determine the optimum dose of applied Urea and Cocoly® fertilizers which gives the optimum cane and sugar yield in Kenana Sugar scheme.