Effects of short periods of chilling and warming on potato sugar content and chipping quality

Two days of chilling (exposure to 1 C) had no detectable effect on chip color or sugar content of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) tubers. Four days of chilling led to increases in sugars if potatoes were stored at 10 C or 19 C for 3 to 4 days after chilling ended. Longer chilling gave increases in sugars by the end of the chilling period, and returning tubers to 10 C or 19 C magnified the response. Glucose and fructose gave similar increases from chilling treatments, except that glucose levels were consistently greater. Sucrose was increased by chilling, but the response pattern did not always resemble that of the reducing sugars. Twenty-seven days of storage at 19 C after chilling lowered levels of reducing sugars late in the storage season but not in December. Cultivars differed in response to chilling. Kennebec tubers accumulated far more reducing sugars but much less sucrose than did Norchip tubers. Storage at 19 C after chilling lowered the sucrose content of Kennebec and Monona while raising that of Norchip.