REAL-TIME SENSING OF POTATO POSTHARVEST QUALITY FOR CROP LOSS MANAGEMENT IN BULK STORAGE ENVIRONMENT

The United States is the fifth largest producer of potato in the world. Potatoes are grown on more than 943,00 acres in 30+ states, producing ~20 million metric tons, totaling about $3.8 billion in sales. However, post-harvest disease management continues to challenge potato stakeholders, with annual bulk storage losses ranging between 6% to 7.5%. Caused by numerous plant pathogens, post-harvest storage diseases are major factors negatively affecting the tuber quality. Current management methods rely on personnel periodically monitoring storage facilities for visible symptoms and smelling the air for anomalies. This project explores the development and evaluation of non-invasive, real-time sensing techniques to detect and manage diseases at earlier stages to prevent disease propagation and crop loss. We will apply two approaches to monitoring and managing early potato rot using volatile sensing techniques to detect trace level volatile biomarkers and using optical sensing techniques to monitor sinkage and temperature. Our previous studies indicated that the field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometer can detect soft rot and Pythium leak from 1 to 5 days after inoculation, at asymptomatic stages, in laboratory conditions. The major goal of the current project will be to implement these techniques in storage conditions for potential real-time monitoring and diagnosis.