Construction and evaluation of naturally ventilated consumer potato storage
1998
Tena Alamirew (AUA, Dire Dawa (Ethiopia))
In countries where there are only one or two harvests in a year, potato has to be stored to obtain higher market price or to insure that seeds of the correct physilogical stage are available at the required planting time. In Ethiopia, storage of potato is practised neither at the farm level nor in the trading sector nor among the consumers.The objective of the eperiment was to assess alternative low cost storage techniques to be used at a farm level. Ovservation was made for two years and a naturally ventilated storage structure was found satisfactory to temporarily hold ware potato for more than three months depending on the dormancy period of the variety.Tuber moisture loss, temperature variations inside the store, relative humidity, sprouting and greening were monitored. During the three months period of storage, the potato price at the local market increased by 180 percent. A simple cost benefit analysis showed that only with a small proportion of his one year benefit the farmer can cover the cost of constructing the store.
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