Optimising the harvest date of sugar cane

A sugar mill region contains large differences in sugar yield due to harvest date, harvest age of crop, geographical location and crop class. While it is desirable to harvest all cane when the likely sugar yields are at the season's peak, this is not possible due to limited capacities of harvesting, mill crushing and transport. Optimising the harvest date of cane offers the potential to improve the competitiveness of the Australian Sugar Industry. This paper outlines (i) an operations research methodology to optimise harvest date and crop cycle length; (ii) specifies the data requirements; and (iii) presents preliminary results on applications in different mill regions.