Necessity and impact of precooling of potato for quality retention during cold storage

Precooling is necessary in the postharvest chain to preserve the quality and increase the shelf life of various crops. The following research was performed to understand the necessity of precooling in potatoes and optimize the precooling parameters to retain their quality during standard cold storage. Hence, the study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, the Kufri Jyoti potatoes were subjected to field heat for 0 – 64 h, then were precooled for 48 h before sending to cold storage for 60 days. The results demonstrated that when the time delay (TD) was doubled, weight loss increased by 50 %, moisture content decreased by 1.46 %, texture decreased by 4.1 %, pH decreased by 1.4 %, total soluble solid content (TSS) decreased by 3 %, and color deviation increased by 7 %. These observations demonstrated a reduction in potato quality with a raise in TD between harvest and cooling. In the next section, the samples were subjected to precooling for 48 h at varying temperature (T_P) (6 °C, 8 °C, and 10 °C) and relative humidity (RH_P) (87 %, 91 %, and 95 %), and the impact was analyzed on the same responses after cold storage of 60 days. Regression models were built for every dependent variable, and models with non-significant lack-of-fit were utilized for optimization. The results of this study demonstrated that precooling helped in reducing the quality deterioration in cold-stored potatoes.