After the withdrawal of chlorpropham (CIPC) as a sprout suppressant, potato store management in the UK has had to adapt to using volatile products such as Biox-M (spearmint oil), ARGOS (orange oil), 1,4SIGHT (1,4-dimethylnaphthalene, DMN) and ethylene (Biofresh and Restrain). CPM (Crop Production Magazine) takes a look in this article, written by agriculture journalist Heather Briggs.
The 2022-2023 storage season is the first since DMN received authorisation for use in GB. Its first year’s use in this country has been under atypical conditions because the 2022 crop of potatoes went into store at high temperature, with high rates of respiration.
Frontier Agriculture crop production specialist Dr Reuben Morris says: “We have seen from seed potatoes that last year’s conditions resulted in unusual physiology, so the 2022 crop would have been challenging for any sprout suppressant.
“We knew we would need to bring the respiration rates down as soon as possible after putting the crop in store, so we often applied two full doses of DMN early in the season – it worked well, moving these lively crops into a state of dormancy.”
The potato crops Frontier Agriculture oversee are mainly for processing – including crisping – and he notes that last year significantly more DMN was used than Biox-M or ARGOS, despite it being its first year in GB.
Source: CPM. This is an excerpt – read the full article here. Pdf version here
Related: 1,4-DMN: Natural bio-control for potato storage set for international regulatory approval
Related: Potato sprout management: 1,4SIGHT a ‘safe and sustainable’ alternative to CIPC, says product specialists
Photo: Credit 1,4GROUP
