3.3.2. Industrially relevant variables for the quality of sugar cane juice
Table 3 shows the results obtained for the industrial variables.These values are the average of the data obtained from the labo-ratory analyses and no statistical differences between treatmentswere found for such variables. Significant differences in variablesrelated to the application of irrigation water (i.e. brix, sucrose andmoisture content in the juice) were expected, however such dif-ferences were not observed. The highest concentrations of sucrosein juice and brix were recorded in the T3 treatment (15.57% and17.13◦, respectively) and the lowest in T2 (14.65% and 15.55◦,respectively); however, no statistically differences were found. Thisresult is quite similar to that reported by Inman-Bamber and deJager (1988) who, in a rain out shelter experiment, found a greatersucrose yield in the irrigated treatment (11.8 t ha−1) than in a treat-ment without irrigation water for five months (10.7 t ha−1). In theirwork, the cane yield was reduced from 108 t ha−1for an irrigatedtreatment to 75 t ha−1in the one without irrigation water, butsucrose content was increased only from 10.9 to 14.3% in the sametreatments, respectively. The absence of statistically significant dif-ferences in the concentration of sucroses in the juice reveals thatthe implementation of frequent drip irrigation had no significanteffect on the reduction of the concentration of sucrose, which raisesthe possibility of obtaining high cane and sucrose yields with dripirrigation.