Environmental Factors on the Incidence and Development of End Rot on Sweetpotato

Sweetpotato storage decay is a significant economic loss to producers. Ethylene treatments used to kill vines have been implicated as contributing to internal necrosis and the incidence of end rots. However, end rots, which have a complex etiology occur in stored roots with no an ethylene application.  The objective of this research is to evaluate the influence of abiotic factors such as flooding, severity of harvest (skinning), curing, and storage conditions on the incidence and development of end rots in storage roots. Beauregard was planted in a randomized complete block with three replications in 2012 and 2013.  Factorial combinations consisted of flooding/non-flooding; skinned/non-skinned; cured/non-cured; recommended storage/ambient storage. Storage roots were in all possible combinations and were recorded every month for six months. Similar trends were observed in both years. Skinned/non-skinned; cured/non-cured; recommended storage/ambient storage factors were significant in the percentage of weight loss and incidence of end rot while flooding/non-flooding factor was significant only in the percentage of weight loss. End rot incidence occurred in  proximal, distal or both ends. However, the incidence tended to occur the most in the proximal end. The treatments that consisted of non-cured and ambient storage had higher weight loss than the other factorial treatments. Moreover, this combination had higher incidence of end rot (5% to 10% in 2012 and 24% to 28% in 2013) compared to the treatments that consisted of cured and recommended storage (1% to 2% in 2012 and 2% to 5% in 2013). Curing and recommended storage were the most important factors in the study mitigating end rot.