from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A shoot sprouting from a plant base, as in the banana, pineapple, or sugar cane.
- intransitive v. To produce or grow as a ratoon.
- transitive v. To propagate (a crop) from ratoons.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A shoot sprouting from the root of a cropped plant, especially sugar cane.
- v. To sprout ratoons.
- v. To cut a plant, especially sugar cane, so that it will produce ratoons.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. Same as rattoon, n.
- n. A rattan cane.
- intransitive v. Same as rattoon, v. i.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A sprout or shoot springing up from the root of a plant after it has been cropped; especially, a new shoot from the root of a sugar-cane that has been cut down. Compare plant-cane.
- n. The heart-leaves in a tobacco-plant.
- To sprout or send up new shoots from the root after being cropped or cut down: said of the sugar-cane and some other plants.
- To induce the growth of young shoots by cutting back (old plants); raise another crop from (the old stools): as, to ratoon sugar-cane.
- In the West Indies, to continue the growth of (plants) after the close of the dry season and after seed has been sown for the new crop: as, to ratoon cotton.
As the weather wasn't favorable for planting sugar cane seeds, also known as ratoon, in the last two years, it's unlikely that sugar cane output will rise sharply, Mr. Hiremath said.
"In the last two years, the climate wasn't favorable for ratoon, and farmers have sold the seed to molasses manufacturers at high prices this year," Mr. Hiremath of Karvy Comtrade said.
"High prices offered by liquor manufacturers have induced farmers to sell even the ratoon," said a north Indian sugar company official.
In ratoon cane which is not burned at harvest, the trash must be lined up, usually in alternate interrows.
[A ratoon crop is a crop that comes up from the roots after a previous crop was harvested.]
In Mauritius, whether in plant or ratoon cane, one row of maize is planted in alternate interrows of cane [i.e. as you walk across the field you encounter cane, cane, maize, cane, cane, ...].
The maize would then be intercropped with the ratoon cane.
However, maize has less adverse effects on the cane when it is a ratoon cane crop.
Consequently, Dr. Govinden suggests leaving the interrow between newly planted cane for other crops such as potato, beans, and groundnuts that are less competitive than maize and which themselves do better with newly planted cane than in ratoon cane.
The sweet-stalk pearl millet is used as a fodder that is usually harvested in September, and a subsequent ratoon crop can be taken for grain and straw.