DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIMENTS FOR THE HARVESTING AND STORING OF VIDALIA SWEET ONIONS

Sweet onions brought in nearly $70 million in 1998. Sweet onions have a soft bulb which makes them susceptible to injury if handled too roughly. Once injured, invasion by pathogens tends to render the bulbs unusable except for quick sale. They were harvested by hand until about ten years ago when efforts were begun to develop a mechanical harvester. Also, at that time, work was underway to develop a way of storing part of the crop so as to extend the market window beyond the traditional 6-8 weeks. Low temperature and low oxygen atmosphere conditions proved to be the most suitable. In 1998 and 1999, sweet onions were hand and machine harvested. They were stored for 30 weeks to determine the practicality of extending the market window. Storability of onions in bulk from the two harvest methods were compared using a mixed model analysis. A mixed model analysis was done on all the research data collected between 1992 and 1998 on curing and storing onions