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Dr. Kenneth Gravois, LSU AgCenter Sugarcane Specialist
“Gentlemen, remember that whenever humanity broods over a problem, sooner or later it will be solved. Combine and concentrate your efforts in a first-class experiment station, and you will find the difficulties now encountered in sugar making, before its investigations, ‘melting away, like streaks of morning light, into the infinite azure of the past.’”
William Carter Stubbs, May 1885, Address to the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association
The Louisiana sugar industry needed innovation. The industry needed science.
In 1795 Etienne de Bore’ and Antoine Morin were able granulate sugar from sugarcane on de Bore’s plantation in New Orleans – the Louisiana sugar boom had begun. In 1806 Governor William Claiborne of the Territory of Orleans would write a letter to President Thomas Jefferson that included this thought, “The facility with which the sugar planters amass wealth is almost incredible.”Sugar production and its associated wealth continued to climb until the Civil War intervened.
Louisiana sugar planters faced challenges in the post-Civil War era, namely competition from beet sugar and science – both flourishing in Europe at the time. The Louisiana Sugar Planters Association (LSPA) was formed in November 1877 by prominent sugar planters, such as Duncan Kenner and John Dymond. The mission of the LSPA was to secure favorable federal legislation through sugar tariffs and to promote the application of science to a struggling Louisiana sugar industry.
The primary push to establish a sugarcane experiment station in Louisiana can be traced to the United States Department of Agriculture and Harvey Wiley. Wiley, chief chemist for the state of Indiana, had worked with prominent sugar chemists in Europe and was a proponent of efforts to promote science and the introduction of new sugar producing technologies. The effort to secure the involvement of science in the Louisiana sugar industry culminated in a May 1885 meeting of the LSPA where William Carter Stubbs presented a stirring speech to the group.
Inspiration galvanized into action. In preparation, the LSPA raised a total of $60,000 from local planters and obtained a lease for the Schulze Plantation in Kenner, where the newly formed Sugar Experiment Station would operate for its first two years. William Carter Stubbs was hired in late summer 1885 by the LSPA. Stubbs, born in Virginia, educated at William & Mary and the University of Virginian, and currently working for the Alabama Experiment Station, sprang into action. The Louisiana Scientific Agriculture Association (LSAA), chartered on October 20, 1885, would serve to oversee the Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station. The purpose of the LSAA was to ‘develop and improve the agricultural interests and resources of Louisiana, especially the cultivation of sugarcane and rice by scientific and agricultural and chemical experiments and to disseminate information connected therewith.’LSPA officials hoped that the state would later help support this effort and planned for a legislative push for funds in 1886.
Stubbs established sugarcane plantings of research areas in October 1885 that would systematically investigate means of increasing sugar yields on area plantations. With a background in chemistry and soils, Stubbs was uniquely qualified to analyze both plants and soils for its constituent components. Experiments determined how manures could enrich soils; what form of nitrogen was most beneficial to the sugarcane plant; would surface drainage be adequate for Louisiana’s low alluvial soils or would tile drainage be necessary?
This inaugural effort at establishing a research station was not without its problems. By the fall of 1886, the Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station operated under a deficit of funding. In February 1886, the Louisiana Board of Agriculture established an experiment station on Louisiana State University property in Baton Rouge and to placate concerns of more northern legislators, the Calhoun Experiment Station was established. By the summer of 1886, Stubbs was appointed by the commissioner of agriculture, Thompson J. Bird, as official state chemist, director of the State Experimental Stations, and professor of agriculture at Louisiana State University. Bird was an advocate of agricultural research and a supporter of Stubbs. Dr. Stubbs would remain in New Orleans and manage a budget that included local support from sugar planters, state funds, and federal funds from the recently passed Hatch Act of 1887. This three-way partnership would pay dividends for many years to come.
Stubbs vision for agricultural research was not limited to production agriculture only – he felt that sugar manufacturing and diffusion process trials should also be conducted locally. In 1891, the Audubon Sugar School was established at the Sugar Experiment Station in Audubon Park. The school closed in 1896 but was reestablished on the campus of LSU in 1897 under the direction of Charles E. Coates who would serve as its dean. The Audubon Sugar School was renowned for training sugar factory technicians from around the world in sugar processing techniques.
The USDA was an active cooperator with the Sugar Experiment Station, which was selected for a $10,000 federal grant to explore the use of diffusion technologies for sugar extraction in sugarcane. Throughout the 1890s, the USDA and Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station collaborated on such programs as seed-cane and beet sugar studies, tea cultivation, and the investigation of fiber decorticating machines.
In 1888, USDA assistance enabled Stubbs to evaluate over 70 different sugarcane varieties obtained overseas by U.S. consuls. In 1893, Stubbs received 500 sugarcane seedling varieties from the Royal Agricultural Society of Demerara in the colony of British Guiana, now Guyana. These five hundred varieties were developed from true seed obtained from Barbados. From this evaluation, varieties D74 and D95 were obtained and increased on local plantations. In a report to the LSPA, Stubbs remarked that no single experiment increased sugar production as did the introduction of exotic varieties of sugarcane – the variety boom had begun.
The sugarcane borer, first noted in St. John parish in 1855, was a particularly destructive pest of sugarcane and presented problems to raw sugar processors because of poor cane quality. The Sugar Research Station had an Entomology Department, and J.H.A. Morgan performed detailed investigations into the biology and management of both the sugarcane borer and sugarcane beetle.
Guiding the Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station from 1885 – 1905, William Carter Stubbs proved a popular and effective director.
The work of the Sugar Experiment Station, now part of the LSU campus at Baton Rouge, once again came to the forefront in the 1920s as a part of a continuing three-tiered research front. The American Sugar Cane League was chartered on September 28, 1922, by the consolidation of the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association, American Cane Growers Association, and the Producers and Manufacturers’ Protective Agency. A local USDA presence began in 1919, and the USDA Sugarcane Research Laboratory was established in 1923 in Houma. Within LSU, William G. Taggart and C.B. Gouaux participated in the evaluation of POJ (from Java) and CO (from India) sugarcane varieties to replace disease-ridden sugarcane varieties. A field day, held on July 20, 1926 at the Sugar Experiment Station, highlighted the foreign varieties and new seedling varieties derived from intercrossing of two different sugarcane varieties.
One hindrance to sugarcane breeding in Louisiana was the plant’s lack of flowering because of the cool fall temperature. St. John P. Chilton, plant pathologist and sugarcane breeder for the LAES, established artificial photoperiod schedules that would allow sugarcane to flower in Louisiana. This groundbreaking research was conducted in photoperiod facilities on the LSU campus. Now sugarcane crossing could be done locally in addition to facilities in Canal Point, Florida.
Preston Dunckelman and Richard Breaux initiated recurrent selection sugarcane breeding methods in the mid-1950s that led to the development of high sucrose varieties, such as L 60-25, L 62-96, and L 65-69. Strains of the mosaic virus were becoming increasingly problematic. Pathologists and breeders devised a basic sugarcane breeding program to capture disease-resistant alleles from wild sugarcane clones from Saccharum spontaneum. Preston Dunkleman joined USDA to lead that effort that continues to pay dividends for today’s sugarcane breeders in Louisiana.
Freddie Martin led a team effort for the development of LCP 85-384. This variety had high sugar yield and possessed excellent cold tolerance and stubbling ability. Its popularity increased until its acreage peaked in 2004 when it was grown on 91% of the Louisiana sugarcane acreage. This progress continued under Kenneth Gravois and Keith Bischoff, both students of Martin, as they ushered in a return of “L” varieties into the Louisiana sugar industry. L 01-299 was leading sugarcane variety grown in Louisiana from 2015 to 2025 (at the time of this update).
Sugarcane research continues today within the LSU AgCenter, bolstered by rich tradition and continuing cooperative efforts. While the names may change, the mission is much the same. Leading with science, the goal of AgCenter research and extension programs is to sustain a Louisiana sugar industry that has been the backbone of the south Louisiana economy for more than 200 years.
“The Louisiana sugar industry is a creature of government protection; and even this protection will prove insufficient to sustain it unless it be aided by all of the resources of modern science.”
Joseph L. Brent in a January 1878 address to the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association from a paper entitled, “The Necessity of Science to a Just Development on the Sugar Culture.”
