The Martin Lishman Potato Hot Box range is used for on-farm, processing and supermarket quality control.
Monitoring for bruising and disease avoids costly rejections and ensures high quality product.
The Hot Box reduces bruise development time from several days to just 12 hours. Faster monitoring for bruising and disease avoids costly rejections and assists in the drive for the highest quality product.
How does the Potato Hot Box work?
- Faster bruise development– the biochemical reaction which causes a colour change when potatoes are bruised can take several days to appear in cool dry conditions. The Hot Box speeds up the reaction by creating the optimum warm, damp conditions for bruise development to occur more quickly. Optimum bruise development is at 30°C and 97% RH for 12 hours.
- Testing protocol– samples should be peel tested for bruises as soon as they are removed from the Hot Box. Testing should ideally take place on a tray full of tubers taken regularly from the harvester or grader line. If readings are high, samples should be taken at more locations to try to pinpoint the causes. This can be carried out in combination with our TuberLog electronic potato
A VERSATILE Quality Control Tool
Potato bruising can take several days to show. The Potato Hot Box reduces this time to 12 hours by creating the optimum warm, damp conditions for bruise development. The specific temperature and humidity at which rots and diseases occur can also be re-created.
The Potato Hot Box can help to avoid bruising during harvesting and handling, especially when used in conjunction with the TuberLog electronic potato, by highlighting the crops most at risk from harvesting and grading damage.
Earlier detection of bruising, damage and disease means reducing storage losses and costly processing rejections. The value of the crop can be maintained, extra transport costs avoided and consumer confidence sustained.
Key Features
- Automatic control of temperature and humidity levels with timer to allow infinite variation of testing regimes at up to 97% RH, 40°C and 999 hours
- Ultrasonic atomizing humidifier keeps humidity levels at an accuracy of 1-3%, helping to create the optimum warm, damp conditions for bruise or disease development
- Wire tray baskets accept 25 tubers in a single layer to suit sampling protocols, spaced to allow air circulation for rapid bruise development
The Potato Hot Box is available in 3 standard versions:
- 5 tray (125 tubers);
- 10 tray (250 tubers);
- 30 tray (750 tubers). The 750 has a wheeled trolley base.
SUPERMARKET Shelf Life
Supermarkets wishing to achieve longer shelf life for produce can use the Hot Box to re-create the conditions in the fresh produce areas of the shop.
Discovering the delay between arrival and deterioration can determine the optimum shelf life or the best conditions to extend shelf life for produce including, not only potatoes, but avocadoes, tomatoes, peaches and other fruit and vegetables.
Use of the Potato Hotbox
Typical use cases for the potato hotbox:- 12 HOUR Assessment of Potato BRUISING
- Incubate DISEASE and ROTS before STORAGE (Decide: Store or Process?)
- RESEARCH best conditions for longer SHELF LIFE
