RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN POTATO STORAGE IN EUROPE

Abstract

Recent development trends and perspectives are to find alternative methods and materials like breeding new varieties, finding biological sprout suppressants, or investing in innovative storage facilities and technologies to meet consumer demands, climatic changes, and regulations. Paper discusses applicability of controlled atmosphere or modified atmosphere storage to potatoes. Forced application of ethylene in sealed store-rooms has been proved to control dormancy. Ozone is used to suppress bacteria in order to reduce the risk of spreading diseases. The use of volatile oil as sprout suppressant is of high interest to small scale organic growers. Main advantages of bin boxes compared to bulk storage are high variability and transportability, gentle handling, and ability to smaller partitioning of varieties. The free convective ventilation of big bin box stores needs special strategies to obtain homogeneous temperature. Absorption refrigerator can be used as cooling system for potato stores. The heat may be provided by a biogas generator plant. Modern climate controllers can be equipped with modules to control CO₂ and air humidity. They can be extended with algorithms for potato surface drying and anti-condensing control. Newer control systems have options for weather forecast and online control or monitoring via mobile telephone.