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Sugar Beet
Appears in
Published 2014
The second most important source of sugar in the world, sugar beets, are certain cultivars of the plant now classified as Beta vulgaris, Crassa group. This group also contains the far more numerous cultivars of beetroot, the familiar crimson vegetable.
The root of the plant was originally small and disagreeable in flavour, but with a noticeably sweet taste. As early as 1590 the French botanist Olivier de Serres managed to extract a sugar syrup from it. In those days cane sugar was still very expensive, so his discovery might have been exploited, but nothing came of it at the time.