The Health and Safety Executive has published its Pesticide Usage Survey report: potato stores in the United Kingdom 2020, which contains information on pesticide usage during storage of potatoes grown in 2020 and stored during 2020 to 2021.
The data, which was collected by the Pesticide Usage Survey Teams at Fera Science Ltd, the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute of Northern Ireland, who surveyed 45 farm stores and 128 merchant stores across the UK.
The data shows that 62 per cent of the crop (3.1 million tonnes) received no post-harvest treatments. 79 per cent of this untreated crop was stored in refrigerated stores.
1.2 million tonnes of potatoes were treated, with the results showing that on average crops received two treatments. With the loss of approval of chlropropham (CIPC) the survey saw a large increase in the use of spearmint oil as a sprout suppressant, 76 per cent of ware potatoes being treated with the product. 23 per cent of the ware crop was treated with ethylene.
Around a third of stored seed potatoes were treated with a products such as imazalil, thiabendazole or ethanol.