1Central Potato Research Institute Campus, Modipuram, Meerut-250 110, Uttar Pradesh, India E-mail: vineetsharma.cpri@gmail.com
2Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla-171 001, Himachal Pradesh, India
Online published on 23 December, 2011.
To study the effect of pest infestation on processing attributes of processing varieties in early crop season, studies were carried out at Modipuram, Uttar Pradesh, India during 2003–04 and 2004–05. Studies revealed that the pest infestation significantly lowered the level of both reducing sugar and sucrose content in early crop season. Since leaf hopper (Amrasca devastans Distant), mite (Polyphagotarsonemus latus Banks.) and whitefly (Bemisia tabaci Gennadius) were found associated with early crop season, it is concluded that if these pests are allowed to infest the crop would lead to decrease in the sugar content which could result in better quality of chips. Similarly free amino acid content was also reduced by pest infestation. However, due to increased phenol content in pest infested crop this advantage could not be realized and consequently the quality of the chip made from pest infested crop was of inferior quality. Dry matter content on the other hand decreased substantially (4.9–15.8%) during early crop season as a result of pest infestation
pest infestation, processing attributes, potato, mite, leaf hopper, whitefly
