No. 6/24 SUBSCRIBER EDITION: please go to potatostorageinsight.com/subscribe to sign up as a Synopsis subscriber. Most of our bulletins are fully accessible only to our subscribers.
Dear Subscriber,
Welcome to the June edition of Synopsis, your monthly potato storage update from Potato Storage Insight.
The never-ending spring might finally be coming to an end but, after almost 8 months of what seems like incessant rain, we have a hugely variable crop across the country with some crops barely in the ground whilst others are taking advantage of all this rain to put on growth at a rapid rate.
Large-scale variability is seldom good news, especially when we get to the other end of the season and crops are heading into store. In the meantime there is the challenge of getting crops through the growing season: reports of blight have been around from the outset (some probably seed borne according to those in the know) and we will be looking at getting maleic hydrazide on to some crops destined for storage maybe next month but, for most, more likely in August given the lateness of the season.
Storage of the last of last season's crop is coming to a conclusion, so this month's best practice looks at putting store downtime to best use and giving pointers for preparing stores for the new crop. Our technical insight feature takes a slightly more - er, technical - tack discussing the ins and outs of fans and how their efficiencies are affected by the store design and other factors such as the use of variable frequency drives...
Best practice
Store downtime tasks
At this time of year it is easy to let the weeks roll by, once a store has been emptied, as there is no particular pressure to get the store ready for next season. However, as the summer workload builds, time can suddenly become very short in the lead up to potato harvest and this leaves the store manager on the back foot going into loading with store repairs and other preparatory work being compromised due to a lack of time.
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