Mechanical damage increases the Fresh Mass Loss of potatoes and the ?Markies? cultivar show good postharvest behaviour

The aim of the paper is to evaluate whether mechanical damage and storage conditions affect the quality of the ?Markies? potato for processing. The experimental design was the completely randomized, in the scheme of splitplots. The plots were composed of treatments with and without mechanical damage and the subplots were made up by the evaluation times, with 5 replicates, where the experimental unit was composed of 2 tubers. Tubers of the ?Markies? cultivar from the producing region of Perdizes, State of Minas Gerais, were planted in June 2016 and harvested in October 2016. The tubers were stored for 2 months at 8?C and further divided into treatment with damage, in which the tubers were subjected to impact and abrasion and control treatment, in which the tubers were not damaged. After that, they were stored at 28?C and evaluated for their loss of loss of accumulated fresh mass (FML), total soluble sugar (TSS), reducing sugar (RS), nonreducing sugar (NRS) and color after frying in the periods of 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48 h after being placed at room temperature. The mechanical damage in the tubers increased FML, however, it did not affect the content of TSS, NRS, RS and color after frying. Increases were observed in the content of TSS and NRS after 12 h of evaluation. Grade 2 was assigned to the coloring scale after frying for the tubers regardless of treatment or evaluation period. Conclusion Mechanical damage increases the FML and the ?Markies? cultivar is suitable for the industry of pre-fried potato processing even under the occurrence of mechanical damage and exposure to high temperatures. ? Source Effect of Mechanical Damages and Storage Conditions on Quality of Markies cv. Potatoes for Processing Dreice Nascimento Gon?alves, Luciana Gomes Soares, Ariana Mota Pereira1, Paula Ac?cia Silva Ramos, Maria Eduarda da Silva Guimar?es1 and Fernando Luiz Finger DOI: 10.9734/bpi/atias/v3 In:?Advances and Trends in Agricultural Sciences Vol. 3?? Pictures is Fig 3, page 97 of the paper - Post-frying coloration of cv. ?Markies? with and without mechanical damage after 2 months of storage and 48 hours after the mechanical damage was determined based on the grading scale recommended by the ?United States Standards for Grades of Frozen French Fried Potatoes? (USDA, 1967) and the fast food industry color grading chart from 1 to 5