SUGAR FROM BEET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1938, Page 5

SUGAR FROM BEET

EXPERIMENTS BY WAIRARAPA CHILDREN. Children attending the schools in the ■Wellington Education Board’s district have been busy lately making their own sugar from beet grown in school plots. Anything sweet is appreciated by most children and it is not surprising to learn that the pupils of the Hinakura- School took their product home and made it into toffee. The seed in the first place was obtained by the Wellington Education Board from the British Government, which is encouraging the growth of sugar beet in England and by experiments has raised the percentage of yield from 18 to 30. The seed secured by the board was distributed to the schools in its district and the average yield of the roots is a little over 30 tons to the acre. At least two crops, one at Tokomaru and one at Pirinoa, were as high as 60 tons to the acre. The crop having been harvested, the children set about making sugar by slicing up the beet, boiling it in a saucepan and evaporating the liquid. The product is somewhat equivalent to brown sugar and probably is the first ever made in the Wairarapa. An example from the West School tasted very much like coarse brown sugar.