Evaluation of sugar cane maturation by measuring sucrose content through X-ray fluorescence and chemometrics

• Grant number: 11/05860-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2011
• End date: January 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Analytical Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Maria Izabel Maretti Silveira Bueno
• Grantee: Fábio Luiz Melquiades
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Sugarcane industry has an important role in the Brazilian and global economy given the benefits that renewable fuels can currently generate and contribute to world demand in the future, reducing environmental impact on fuel production. In this sense, investments in research in the area will bring results that can optimize the entire process involved in the business of sugar cane. The objective of this work will be to perform a sucrose level monitoring in different varieties of sugar cane, during its maturation process, by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence using portable equipment and multivariate analysis (chemometrics), aiming to determine the sugar cane maturation index. Leaves and stem samples will be analyzed with portable equipment at field and in the laboratory with bench top equipment. The idea is to use x-ray scattering to obtain the interest results. Besides this, will be verified if XRF methodology allied to chemometrics allow discriminating different varieties of sugar cane cultures. The fact that the scientific community is increasingly accepting the use of portable XRF as an analytical method, indicates that the results of this project can generate a significant impact on the velocity and versatility of the analysis. Preliminary results performed recently indicate that the methodology is promising.