Performance Evaluation of Different Storage Technologies on Storage Stability of White-Coloured Sweet Potato Roots Under Farmers’ Conditions in Tanzania

Abstract

Sweet potatoes' high perishability after harvesting is one of the major factors limiting their potential. This is exacerbated by the lack of appropriate storage methods. This study aimed to evaluate different storage technologies for the storage stability of white-coloured sweet potato roots under farmers’ conditions in Tanzania. The study was carried out at the Crop Science laboratory at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) for 77 days in a completely randomized experimental design. The experiment included four treatments: improved traditional raised, woven Polypropylene Bags, bamboo buckets, and ventilated bags. Each treatment was replicated three times. Physiological loss in weight, hardness, total soluble solids, colour, and beta-carotene content were measured at the Food Science laboratory at SUA during the experiment storage period. Analysis of variance and comparison of means for the sample collection was performed using GenStat® Executable release 16 Statistical Analysis Software. White-coloured sweet potato roots stored in ventilated bags and the improved traditional raised platform resulted in a weight loss of 49.4% and 68.7%, respectively. It was also observed that the improved traditional raised platform had a significantly high total soluble content /concentration, with a value of 21.27% while Ventilated bags resulted in a Total soluble solid content of 17.02 %, which was significantly low. Furthermore, results show that Ventilated bags had the lowest beta carotene content (8.72 µg/g) compared to other treatments. The findings of this study strongly suggest that storing white-coloured sweet potato roots in ventilated bags is an appropriate method. In the context of the current study, further research on different sweet potato roots packaging materials is recommended