Managing maturity to improve crop processing quality and storage

This project involved two years of field and storage trials which were carried out at ADAS and Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research. Both chipping and crisping varieties were included, and fry colour and fry defects were used to gauge processing quality. The field experiments included different seed crop husbandry, chitting and planting date treatments whilst the storage trials evaluated the influence of storage temperatures on processing quality.

Results

The work showed that although the planting date and chitting treatments resulted in significant effects on fry colour during storage, these effects were small relative to the seasonal differences in fry colour that were observed during the study. It was not possible to use simple in-field measurements such as rate of canopy senescence, level of senescence at defoliation or tuber sugar concentrations to predict storage potential. In store, raised temperature generally maintained fry colour better.