The heightened competitiveness of the Brazilian sugar cane agro-industry is directly related to the results obtained from technological research and development programs carried out at the Canavieira Technology Center.

The project has been completely financed by the cooperative producers who receive immediate and direct benefits from the Canavieira Technology Center, enabling its leading competitive position on the domestic and international stage to be maintained. In the near future, other producers will also be affected.

The strategic repositioning of cooperative members in the face of technological challenges has recently redirected the mission of the Canavieira Technology Center, privileging the development of higher added value and high technology projects, and removing service provision that can be supplied by the market, especially in engineering and the industrial process.

Copersucar’s Genetic Improvement of Sugar Cane Project has resulted in new cane varieties, with rights and royalties on their multiplication and commercial use creating concrete perspectives for the program’s self-sustainability.

Using modern equipment based on satellite images, the Canavieira Technology Center tracks and identifies sugar cane varieties with extreme efficiency and precision, demonstrating the potential for perfecting harvest forecasts and improving the monitoring of sugar cane cultivation.

In addition to efficient biological pest control, the Canavieira Technology Center has developed more efficient and safer systems for diagnosis of disease, through sugar cane DNA analysis.

Control of leafhopper and genetic sequencing of the bacteria causing rickets in cane stumps are recent examples in this area. In this genetic field, Copersucar is technologically prepared and at the forefront of knowledge to respond to the development desired by Brazilian society on the question of genetically modified varieties.

In addition to the introduction of new, more conservational management techniques for cultivation, there has also been room for the concept of Production Environments that allow exploitation of the full potential of varieties. The outstanding innovation in agricultural operations during the period has been the system of floating base cutting for chopped cane, already installed in 80 harvesters, encompassing 12 cooperative units, corresponding to 70% of Copersucar units’ harvested area.

Excellent quality sugar production and storage procedures, and the application of the concept of food safety in sugar production, among other product quality initiatives, keep Copersucar constantly attuned to client expectations.

In sugar cane processing, the system of dry cleaning of raw cane, mechanically collected, reduces impurities and increases the efficiency of milling and sugar cane straw and residue energy use.

Alcohol manufacture was worth special mention during the period, marked by the consolidation of fermentation technology, with new methods of operational and automatic control, and optimizing of the alcohol manufacturing process and energy consumption. Technological advances in alcohol production from the bagasse show interesting perspectives for economic viability under certain conditions.

New horizons are opening for the Cooperative, with advances in controlling industrial biotechnology, in the yeast chain for obtaining products with higher added value, and the use of yeast DNA analysis in the manufacture of alcohol. Important advances can also be seen in the field of new products, including the establishment of the first manufacture of sugar-based biodegradable plastics –PHB in a cooperative factory after mastering the technology for industrial production of high biodegradable capacity polymer.

While participating in the principal conferences and seminars at global level for updating knowledge and permanent alignment at the forefront of technology, Canavieira Technology Center specialists also disseminate knowledge to the teams in the cooperative units, with thousands of hours of training, seminars and courses each year.