sugarcane

American  

[shoog-er-keyn] / ˈʃʊg ərˌkeɪn /

Or sugar cane

noun

1. a tall grass, Saccharum officinarum, of tropical and warm regions, having a stout, jointed stalk, and constituting the chief source of sugar.

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Etymology

Origin of sugarcane

First recorded in 1560–70; sugar + cane

Explanation

Sugarcane is a tall, grassy plant that's used to make sugar. The majority of sugarcane is grown in Brazil. Most of the world's sugar is produced from sugarcane — and in recent years, that's meant a total of about 1.8 billion tons of harvested sugarcane annually. Special factories process the cut cane, extracting sugar crystals from inside its stalks, then evaporating moisture from the crystals to create fine, white table sugar. Other sugar products come from sugarcane as well, including molasses and cane syrup.

Example Sentences

A new type of artificial saliva, delivered as a mouthwash and made using a lab-modified sugarcane protein called CANECPI-5, could help protect the teeth of patients with head and neck cancer.

From Science Daily • Apr. 5, 2026

In outdoor settings, sugarcane and palm were more prolific than algae in the results that Exxon researchers shared with Wojnar, while corn was about on par, the internal documents show.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 31, 2026

Right at the start of the Puerto Rican singer’s performance at Super Bowl LX, as he wades through faux sugarcane fields, he passes a series of small businesses.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 9, 2026

Still, the muggy morning session has the Bula FC squad sweating heavily at the club's base in Ba, a town on Fiji's main island in a northern coastal area known for its sugarcane farms.

From Barron's • Feb. 5, 2026

Baba and I had driven over the summit countless times on our way to Jalalabad, the city of cypress trees and sugarcane fields where Afghans vacationed in the winter.

From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini