Abstract:
Potato is one of the most popular crops in Sri Lanka. It is used for preparation of
delicious food and industrial production. Elimination of post harvest losses is essential
to maximize the profit in potato production. This study examined the mode of post
harvest losses and percentage loss during each post harvest operations carried out by
farmers in Welimada area. The study area comes under the agro ecological region of
Intermediate Upcountry (IU3a), receiving annual rainfall of 1200 to 2250 mm and
average mean temperature ranges from 15 to 22 °C. This study was conducted by
administering and structured questionnaire among randomly selected 28 farmers from
different GS divisions in Welimada area.
The study showed that more than 60 % of the farmers having a land extent less than 1
acre came under small scale and medium (1-10 acres) and large scale farmers (> 10
acres) were 30% and 10% respectively. Major cultivating potato varieties were
Granola, Desiree, Binella and Raja accounted for 75, 10, 8, 7 percent respectively. They
rotationally cultivate beans, cabbage, raddish and beet root in their land. The percentage
of farmers cultivating beans, cabbage and raddish were 62, 26 and 12 respectively. Post
harvest losses of potato during harvesting accounted for 16 % in which wounding,
covering by soil and peel off were 50, 35 and 15 percentage respectively. Peel off was
not considered as a severe post harvest loss which happens frequently in hard soil and
early harvesting o f potato. Harvested tubers were stored on floor, jute bags, wooden
and plastic boxes. Both wooden and plastic boxes reduce losses in storage than other
methods. During transporting, suppressing effect in jute bag facilitated oozing of sap
from tuber and it induced fungal growth and finally increased rotted tubers which
accounted for 9 % of losses. Tubers on the top of the jute bags were tied loosely and
allowed to vibrate each other and induced peel off. The average potato yield varied
from 12.6 to 16 mt/ha.
