New Guinea Helped
p. 96 · Read in the full issue
World Sugar Production Sugar Technologists Meet in Brisbane
ABOUT 90 overseas and interstate visitors attended the conference of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists in Brisbane, in Sep tember. The Congress, which began on September 11, was preceded by a two weeks’ trip of delegates to Queensland’s sugar country in a special train provided by the State Government.
Representatives from the United States, South Affrica, India, England, Mexico, Mauritius, Philippines, Hawaii, Java.
China, Fiji and Australia attended.
World chairman of the Society is Dr.
Pieter Honig, who has visited Australia on numerous occasions. A native of the Netherlands, he was appointed director of sugar experiment stations in NEI, 1927.
In 1942 he escaped trom the Japs in the last plane out of Java and returned to NEI in 1945 as director of agriculture. He resigned in 1949 to become director of the West Indies Sugar Coporation in New York.
When he arrived in Brisbane as one of the US delegates, Dr. E. W. Brandes, spoke of the aid that has been given the sugar industry by New Guinea.
In 1928 he and Mr. C. Pemberton (Hawaii) led an expedition to New Guinea and Papua for new cane varieties.
“I have great respect for the New Guinea natives as horticulturists,” said Dr. Brandes.
“There are simply hundreds of varieties of cane they have developed by their catch-as-catch-can methods.
“One cane developed in Hawaii from those brought back in 1928 has the highest yield of any commercial cane— -130 tons an acre.”
Dr. Brandes said that a New Guinea tour by Queensland technologists in January 1951, would find many new varieties— some wild, others developed by natives.
It should be noted, however, that al thought, as Dr.. Brandes says, New Guinea has contributed greatly to the in dustry, New Guinea has no sugar industry of its own, nor is it encouraged along those lines. The reason is that it is Australian territory and Australia has a sugar industry—the only sugar industry in the world worked by white men. This industry has always been zealously pro tected by every Australian Government.