What Is The Process Of Potato Production In Potato

INTRODUCTION

Potato belongs to the family Solanaceae along with other well-known cultivated plants including chillies, tomatoes, tobacco, pepper and eggplant (Miranda and Aguilera 2006).

Potatoes are the fourth most important vegetable product for human nutrition in the world (Aghbashlo et al. 2009). The annual world production of potatoes in 2009 was 329,581 million tonnes. Major producing countries are China,

Russian Federation, Indian, Ukraine and the U.S.A. Potato production in Turkey was about 4.397 million tonnes in 2009

(FAO 2011). A possible method of storing potatoes and avoiding further deterioration is by drying treatment of the product. Decreasing the moisture content guards against degradative reactions, fromboth the physicochemical and

2006). This process improves the food stability, since it reduces considerably the water and microbiological activity of the material and minimizes physical and chemical changes during its storage

(Hatamipour et al. 2007). Sun drying is the most common drying method of agricultural product in the tropical and subtropical countries. This method is cheapest and is successfully employed in various agricultural products.Moreover, it is traditionally practiced because there is negligible cost in processing and work of spreading and turning the crop.

However, the long drying time is undesirable for economic reasons and because of the danger of contamination and spoilage of the product exposed to the open environment

(Sacilik et al. 2006; Adedeji et al. 2008). To improve the

Journal of Food Processing and Preservation ISSN 1745-4549 quality of products, traditional drying techniques should be replaced with the industrial dryers such as freeze and hot air dryers. Freeze-drying is said to be best drying technology regarding product quality of the end product (Claussen et