Squatters destroy 17,000 varieties of GuySuCo’s sugar cane worth $2B

…dubbed a massive “future financial” loss

By Rupa Seenaraine

The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has lost a significant chunk of its research crop at the Chateau Margot, East Coast Demerara (ECD) nursery, after some 17,000 varieties of sugarcane were destroyed by squatters.

Head of the Agriculture Research Centre, Gavin Ramnarain the Guyana Times in an exclusive interview that the damaged plants were of fine quality, with the potential to earn the country billions per year. The loss has also dampened Guyana’s upward thrust in the sector, since years of research have been completely devastated.
The issue was brought to the Corporation’s attention after persons started to squat on the land. As this illegal activity continued, persons burnt plants to clear space to erect structures. It started with a few hundred plants and then continued with thousands.
GuySuCo had over 81,000 individual clones – and when the period for testing was imminent, a few varieties could have achieved all of the intended specifications.
Plantlets are usually developed based on sugar content; resistance to disease, rodents or stemborers; and ratooning among other areas and this process alone takes many years. The trials continue until the desired plant is obtained. These plants are tested in different soils as well as for output in the factory. The Agriculture Research Centre is the brain behind this production and is where all varieties in the fields are developed before being commercialised.

“Breeding of canes takes a very, very long time. It could take between 12 to sometimes 18 years to produce one variety of cane. In the last month or so, the first field that the squatters burnt (CM44) we lost 470 varieties of cane. The next subsequent burning was a total of 16,600 individual canes. The area we currently occupy for experimentation, we have 81, 830 individual clones,” Ramnarain explained.
“Some that we lost are very, very good canes. The cane that was lost could’ve contained a cane variety that could’ve passed these tests to become a commercial variety. One variety of commercial cane could probably occupy about 25 per cent of cane production, so each has a potential to earn two billion dollars for GuySuCo per year.”
Ramnarain said it was a “massive future financial loss”, since the end result was not achieved. It remains unknown whether a viable new variety was being cultivated in the destroyed segment.
“We don’t know what we lost. Each one of these canes is an individual. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can put the mother and father cane back again and they will never produce that same genetic combination. We can never recreate it, so the plant breeders have lost maybe 17 or 18 years of work,” Ramnarain explained.
Plant breeding takes decades of research before a commercial variety can be achieved. Recently, a variety that started in 1998 become a commercial variety.
“People did not understand that it’s not just a cane plant. It’s somebody’s work. The data can never be retrieved. We have to protect these things,” he shared.
Reflecting on the situation, Ramnarain said that the ‘breeding fields’ at Chateau Margot were responsible for production across the various estates.
Guyana’s Cane Breeding Programme is the second oldest in the world, dating back to 1909 and is considered among the best. There is a close breeding network among countries such as the United States of America, Barbados, Brazil, Kenya, India and many others, where samples are traded.
However, the canes bred here are localised for Guyana, where the process continues to develop plants that can withstand climate change, drought, and long periods of inundation.
“Canes that we breed here are localised for Guyana. You can’t really bring a cane from Florida, Brazil or India and plant it here. It has to be adapted to the local conditions…We do use these foreign canes, but we use them as parents. We breed them with our local varieties. This process takes a lot of time and it takes the same time everywhere,” Ramnarain revealed.

Presently, the remaining varieties at Chateau Margot are being moved in order to safeguard against another loss. This is not the first time sugar cane varieties have been destroyed. In earlier days when the process was done at Sophia, Greater Georgetown, persons who started illegally occupying the lands forced GuySuCo to move to the Chateau Margot location.
The research team remains hopeful that some of the destroyed plants can reshoot.
The Research Head expressed, “We’re trying to recover now what we can. That alone can take a couple of years. Right now, we have a couple hectares that are still at the CM section and that 31 hectares are all that we have. We are moving the varieties se quickly as we can to LBI.”
Their Barbadian partners have been appraised of the situation and they have responded with concerns. The official said while they were covered for the next decade, this gap would have to be filled and they have varieties to do so.