Potato rot disease incidence among supermarket owners within Raymond Mhlaba local municipality of South Africa

Abstract

This study assessed the incidence of potato rot disease in supermarkets, within Raymond Mhlaba local municipality. Sixty two structured questionnaire, were randomly administered to supermarket owners in towns that were within the study municipality. The results obtained, revealed that 40.3% of the sampled supermarkets lose between R1501-R2000 (South African rand) annually,while 24.3% of the respondents lost R500 yearly. The study further revealed that, 98.4% of the supermarket owner indicated that potato rot disease mostly occurs in summer. Conversely, 51.6% of the respondents indicated that they lost 101 kg of potatoes per annum. Furthermore, 6.5% of the supermarket owners do not have knowledge of the cause of potato rot disease. A total of 100% of the respondents indicated that they do not use artificial fungicide in the preservation of potatoes. However, 91.95% of the supermarket owner indicated their willingness to adopt the use of bio fungicides for potato preservation. Environmental factors, such as temperature, relative humidity, poor handling and poor sanitary conditions were identified as factors that could lead to potato rot disease infestation during storage.

Keywords

• biofungicides
• environmental factors
• potato
• rot disease
• supermarket owners