Credited to Papua New Guinea. Sources place the domestication on the island of New Guinea, which is now divided between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and do not name a site. One review also notes a view that the species originated in the Indonesian archipelago.
How it began
A 2022 review in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution states that sugarcane domestication began around 8000 BCE in the region of New Guinea. It reports the hypothesis that people selected Saccharum officinarum from the wild species Saccharum robustum there, following the proposal of Daniels and Roach in 1987. The New York Botanical Garden likewise states that the species was first domesticated in New Guinea. No single site or group is named, and the island today includes Indonesian territory as well as Papua New Guinea.
How it works
Sugarcane is a tall grass that stores sugar in its stem. The review points out that, unlike other grasses selected for their grain, it was selected for the stem. Saccharum officinarum is known as the noble cane. It is grown from stem cuttings, not seed. The New York Botanical Garden notes that the plant takes 9 to 24 months to mature, depending on climate, and gives more calories per unit of cultivated area than any other plant.
How it spread
The New York Botanical Garden describes how voyagers from the New Guinea region carried sugarcane and taro by canoe across the South Pacific. The review states that the crop reached Southeast Asia and India, where a method for crystallizing sugar was devised in the fifth century CE. Cultivation then moved to China, Persia and the Mediterranean, reached Spain around 715 CE, and was taken to the Americas.
What lasted
Modern commercial canes are hybrids. Breeders, including Dutch breeders in Java, crossed the sweet noble cane with the hardy wild Saccharum spontaneum and backcrossed to the noble type, a process called nobilization. The review estimates that about 80 percent of the genome of modern varieties comes from Saccharum officinarum.
Where it stands today
The review gives world sugarcane production in 2018 as more than 1.9 billion tonnes, with Brazil at about 747 million tonnes and India at about 377 million tonnes. The New York Botanical Garden states that sugarcane is the raw material for 80 percent of the world's sugar.
