Use the Martin Lishman Potato Hot Box range for quality control monitoring on-farm, during processing and at supermarket intake points. The Hot Box reduces bruise development time from several days to just 12 hours. Faster monitoring for bruising and disease avoids costly rejections and assists in the drive for the highest quality product.
Key Features
How does the Potato Hot Box work?
Why use the Hot Box as part of quality control procedures?
Highlight crops most at risk – the Hot Box can help to avoid bruising by highlighting the crops most at risk from harvesting and grading damage. Early detection means reducing storage losses and costly processing rejections. The value of the crop can be maintained, extra transport costs avoided and consumer confidence sustained.
Early warning of disease – potatoes can be monitored before storage to ensure damaged tubers with the potential to spread rot and disease are not included. Optimum settings of temperature, humidity and testing time that will accelerate the incubation of diseases, can be created and their presence assessed.
Supermarket shelf life – supermarkets wishing to achieve longer shelf life for produce can use the Hot Box to re-create the conditions in the fresh produce areas of the shop. Discovering the delay between arrival and deterioration can determine the optimum shelf life or the best conditions to extend shelf life for produce.
Can the HotBox be used for other produce?
The hotbox can not only be used with potatoes, but avocados, apples, tomatoes, peaches and other fruit and vegetables.
Each tray is designed for a representative sample of approximately 25 standard ware tubers, with enough space around them for air to circulate. The different HotBox models accommodate 125, 250 or 750 tubers in total.
Blackspot bruising can take several days to become visible naturally. The HotBox creates controlled warm and humid conditions that can accelerate bruise development, allowing a peel test to be carried out after around 12 hours using the standard procedure.
Yes. The HotBox is designed as a flexible testing tool, allowing temperature, humidity and runtime to be adjusted for different testing requirements. This makes it useful for investigating bruising, disease development and other quality-control applications.
Yes. As well as bruise development, controlled temperature and humidity conditions can be used to encourage certain diseases or rots to develop so that symptoms can be identified before storage. The appropriate settings will depend on the condition being investigated.
For blackspot bruise development, the commonly used UK protocol is around 30°C with high relative humidity for approximately 12 hours. The HotBox can operate at higher temperatures and humidity levels, but these are part of its wider operating range rather than a single recommended setting for every test. Different users may adopt different conditions depending on their testing requirements.
Not directly. There is no fixed conversion between a certain number of hours in the HotBox and a specific period in commercial storage. Storage life is influenced by factors such as variety, maturity, growing conditions, damage, disease and the actual storage environment. The HotBox is best used as a controlled comparative testing tool, allowing different samples to be assessed under consistent conditions.
There is no single industry-wide bruise grading scale that all growers must use. A simple approach is to record the percentage of potatoes showing bruising and use a consistent severity scale, such as none, slight, moderate and severe. Photographs of representative tubers can also be used as an internal reference. The most important factor is to use the same sample size, testing conditions and assessment method each time so results can be compared reliably.
Products Code
POT/HB/125
Tuber capacity
125
Trays
5
Dimensions (cm)
89w x 70d x 72h
Weight
45kg
Timer
0 to 999 hours
Start delay timer
0 to 99 hours
Operating humidity range
0 – 97% RH
Water tray capacity
9 litres
Operating temperature range
0 – 64°C (°F setting available)
Power
120v OR 230V
Products Code
POT/HB/250
Tuber capacity
250
Trays
10
Dimensions (cm)
89w x 70d x 120h
Weight
76kg
Timer
0 to 999 hours
Start delay timer
0 to 99 hours
Operating humidity range
0 – 97% RH
Water tray capacity
9 litres
Operating temperature range
0 – 64°C (°F setting available)
Power
120v OR 230V
Products Code
POT/HB/750
Tuber capacity
750
Trays
30
Dimensions (cm)
153w x 70d x 176h
Weight
160kg
Timer
0 to 999 hours
Start delay timer
0 to 99 hours
Operating humidity range
0 – 97% RH
Water tray capacity
9 litres
Operating temperature range
0 – 64°C (°F setting available)
Power
120v OR 230V
Our Hot Boxes are packed for export sales in a wooden crate. Packed sizes and weights are as follows:
POT/HB/125: 102cm wide x 76cm deep x 95cm high; 75Kg
POT/HB/250: 105cm wide x 82cm deep x 158cm high; 95Kg
POT/HB/750: 152cm wide x 75cm deep x 190cm high; 290Kg
