[4-1445-C] Postharvest Facility

[4-1445-C-03] Current Status of Monitoring Post-Harvest Potato Storage Units in Atlantic Canada

*Ahmad Al-Mallahi¹ (1. Dalhousie University(Canada))

Keywords:Storage Unit, Montioring System, Environmental Sensors, Potato tuber, Disease control

Potato is the largest crop in Atlantic Canada producing nearly one-third of the national share. Potato production in this region is characterized by short growing season and long storage periods where most of the produce destined for processing. Farmers, in this region, tend to have their own storage units where they pile in their yield immediately after the short harvesting season, while they gradually dispatch batches of their yield upon requests from processing factories. Storage lasts from autumn, through the harsh Canadian winter, until early summer during which farmers have to manage the storage units to keep their potatoes as fresh as possible and to avoid any spread of damage such as rots or other disease. The most common parameters to be monitored in a storage unit are temperature, relative humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration. These parameters control ventilation mechanism that pass air in underground ducts and through the potato pile. A mechanism of humidifying the air is occasionally actuated to increase humidity in the ventilating air to avoid tubers dehydration. Generally, the temperature is kept as low as 9 ℃ while the humidity is raised to as high as 95% to maintain optimum conditions. While sensors within the pile are usually used to monitor temperature, humidity sensors cannot sustain the storage conditions for one whole season. Therefore, farmers rely on portable sensors to measure humidity manually in a low frequency. Similarly, portable sensors are occasionally brought in to measure carbon dioxide concentrations which can be an indicator of disease breakout. Based on the current storage monitoring situation, temperature is fairly controlled by automatic temperature sensing and ventilators actuation, whereas humidity is controlled based on regular actuation of the humidification system and occasional review of the humidity levels. This situation can still cause misjudgment not only because of the low frequency of monitoring humidity but also the bias of measuring certain spots of temperature where the sensors are located. Since losing potatoes in the storage unit can be economically harmful, it is important to improve the current monitoring techniques to maintain potatoes fresh and minimize probability of disease breakout. In our research group at Dalhousie University, we are setting up a comprehensive plan to tackle problems associated with monitoring potato storage units. Our plan will include digging deep to find root causes of humidity sensor failure under storage conditions to develop more robust sensors. Also, we will rely on state-of-the-art technology of wireless sensing to have better understanding of the distribution of the parameters within the storage unit. These developments aim not only to improve the storage conditions but also to serve as early detection systems of disease breakouts. Considering the vast area that needs to be covered to collect data from different storage units scattered at different locations, we plan to develop remote data collection system to enable fast collection of information and centralized big data base for the region. The goal of big data analysis will be to find trends among the disconnected storage units and determine locations at higher risk of yield loss during storage.