CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Inhibiting sprouts with ethylene is simple, safe and harmless The new store at the farm of crop farmer Peter Noteboom from Wolphaartsdijk in the Dutch province of Zeeland boasts an ingenious unit that prevents 700 tons of beautiful table potatoes from sprouting. It works on electricity, contains pure alcohol and produces ethylene. A minuscule computer chip regulates the dosage. No smells, no fire hazard, no harmful residues, no carrying about of equipment or chemical agents. A pipe dream, tommyrot perhaps? addition, a cable runs to a monitoring unit, with a sensor in the store that monitors the ethylene concentration. The small ethylene producer is by no means a heavy alcoholic, says Noteboom. He says that the device uses approximately 250 ml a day per 700 tons of potatoes. One litre of alcohol costs 10 euros, which means that this costs him approximately 75 euros a month. This ingenious unit works on electricity, contains pure alcohol and produces ethylene. A minuscule computer chip regulates the dosage. “ Noteboom’s warning is very timely. At the end of the dark passage, between a long row of brand-new cubic-metre boxes and the side wall of the new store, we find a piece of equipment the size of an auction box. The unit is not totally inconspicuous, though. In the dark, a small display lights up showing some information. Examples of this information are the ethylene percentage in the store, the set ethylene percentage, the number of days that the unit is operational and the temperature in the store, says Noteboom. Beside the display there are another three warning lights and the higher section of the unit has a filler cap for the ‘fuel’ of the sprout inhibitor or regulator. The ‘fuel’ consists of pure alcohol, which the device converts into ethylene, is the explanation. Ethylene is a volatile substance that is able to spread through a closed space such as a storage space with potatoes. ‘You can’t see or smell it at all.’ If the store manager wants to know how much of the ethylene is present, he must rely fully on the information on the display of the device. A cable to the power socket makes sure that the device works. In T Open-end contract However, these are not the only costs the store manager must make for this method of sprout inhibition. The ingenious unit that produces ethylene is leased from Restrain, a company in Breda. ‘In the first year that I used it, it cost me € 1,000, the second year it will cost € 6,500 and then € 500 a year. It is a socalled open-end contract.’ The initial costs for this virtually unknown sprout inhibition method for potatoes in the Netherlands are quite high, is also Noteboom’s opinion. You need quite a bit of confidence in its success then, don’t you? The crop farmer agrees and in order to get that confidence, he carried out an extensive research about the sprout inhibitor beforehand. He did that by reading articles about the method he unit is in the back, mind you don’t fall over.’ The higher section of the unit has a filler cap for the “fuel” of the sprout inhibitor or regulator. The ‘fuel’ is pure alcohol, which is converted into ethylene. Potato World 2009 • number 2 23 Pagina 22
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