Project details
Status: Completed
Potatoes turn green when they are exposed to light, resulting in a product that is not a favourite on the supermarket shelves.
Can we stop the greening and the waste?
PhD student Sabine Tanios is uncovering the major risk factors that affect greening in potatoes, and figuring out how to reduce greening in the field and in the store.
Sabine Tanios says that it’s safe to eat slightly green potatoes.
“Just peel away the really green parts – these bits contain higher concentrations of the bitter-tasting glycoalkaloids,” Sabine said.
Sabine’s research will help develop potato growing methods, new potato packaging and different lighting in stores.
"We’ve found that blue light can cause much higher greening than others so we’re trying to work on controlling the type (of light) that you can use in the supermarket," she said.
Sabine submitted her thesis in September 2019 and had her paper published in November 2019.
Want to know more? Read:
- Read Sabine's Published Paper
- ABC News article
- The Examiner newspaper article
- Fact sheet - Potato greening (PDF 384.3 KB)
For more information contact:
Acknowledgements:
With $4.2 million total funding, the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Horticultural Products was a collaboration with Woolworths, the University of Tasmania, and Australia-wide industry partners and researchers. The Centre was located at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.