Determination of some engineering properties of Irish potato varieties

Irish potato (Solanum Tuberosum) is a nutritive diet in the food chain supply of the Nigerian populace. Apart from the agronomic practices and production level in the country, limited data that exist on engineering properties of the adapted varieties are either scanty or non-existent in print form. Three locally varieties namely Nicola, Bartita and Bawondoya were investigated for some physical and frictional properties using standard laboratory procedures and equipment. The measured parameters are data resource for indigenous processors and machinery and equipment fabricators. The data obtained were subjected to simple descriptive statistics using Microsoft Excel package for computing the mean, range and the standard deviation. The mean, standard deviation and range values for axial diameters (major, intermediate and minor), geometry diameter, sphericity, aspect ratio, mass, volume, density and surface area in varietal order of 'Nicola', 'Bartita' and 'Bawondoya' are (43.61±3.72mm-63.82±7.95mm; 39.41±2.99mm-44.1±2.38mm; 33.41±2.67-5.90±2.87mm); 40.81±1.87mm - 44.02±2.87 mm; 0.70±0.07 - 0.94±0.06; 0.63±0.10 -1.02±0.11; 43.2±4.69g - 52.8±9.9g; 43.3±5.4cm3 - 49.8±10 cm3 ; 1.001±0.057 g/cm3 -1.065±0.076 g/cm3 and from43.30±476.20 mm2 to 6113.63±811.26 mm2 respectively. Bulk density values of 701.43 kg/m3 , 673.30 kg/m3 and 672.86 kg/m3 were obtained in respective order as above. Peel-weight proportion of 2.5%, 2.76% and 1.9% were obtained at 80.6%, 79.4% and 81.4% moisture content (w.b) levels for the sampled weight of Nicola, Bartita and Bawondoya varieties respectively. The frictional parameters results indicate an angle of repose 15⁰ was obtained for both Bartita and Bawondoya varieties while 130 was obtained for Nicola variety. Average values of 0.68, 0.61 and 0.52 were obtained as coefficients of static friction for Bartita, Bawondoya and Nicola varieties respectively.