When the bagasse was treated at 850 W for 2 min, 57% of the lignin was removed, but at this high temperature, charring of the biomass occurred at times longer than 3 min. As the pretreatment temperature was reduced, the time required for efficient lignin removal also increased (Binod et al., 2012). Moreover, data from Fig. 1 showed that increasing the treatment time beyond 15 min did not improve the sugar yield in peel or in core samples. This confirmed the results of Montalbo-Lomboy et al. (2010), who observed that when MW heating was prolonged, the energy required to release 1 g (g) of sugar was also increased especially at low and medium MW power settings. Conversely, Chen et al. (2011) observed that time was a minor factor affecting the results of a microwave pre-treatment of bagasse.