https://doi.org/10.37229/fsa.fjas.2026.03.05

The experimental results showed that chitosan and ozone had a very significant effect on the growth characteristics, yield and quality of tubers. Also, the two had a synergistic effect. Ozone treatment enhanced vegetative growth by increasing plant height, stem count and chlorophyll content in crops. This highlights the stimulation of defensive processes, photosynthetic activity and transport of nutrients towards the productive organ of plant. According to previous studies, Ozone enhances the total and marketable yield, minimizes unmarketable yield, reduces weight loss during storage, maintains tuber firmness, and enhances dry matter, starch content, and specific gravity before and after storage.  It suggests the ability of O2 to slowly respire and degrade to keep the processing quality traits of the tuber stable. On the other hand, all parameters improved ever steadily with chitosan’s increasing concentration. It increased nutrients intake, stimulated cellular division and elongation, enhanced sugar and chlorophyll formation as well as film formation on tuber surface. According to the research, 'chemical treatment' helps in creating a coating that decreases storage losses and moisture loss from the fruit. The coating maintains tissue firmness and stabilization of pH and total soluble solids (TSS) during storage. The relationship that exists between ozone and chitosan treatments recorded a strong synergistic effect to achieve maximum plant height, maximum number of stems, maximum total and marketable yield and minimum unmarketable yield. Moreover, after storage, this combined treatment exhibited the least weight loss together with maximum tuber firmness, dry matter, starch content, and specific gravity. Together, the physiological stimulation from ozone and the structural and nutritional protection from chitosan are likely to bring about effective, sustainable and ecological improvement of the tuber growth, productivity and storage quality. According to this conclusion, we suggest the application of 300 ppm ozone + 2500 ppm chitosan as the effective option in potato plant growth and yield improvement and tuber quality enhancement along storage which helps in enhancing economic value of the crop and reducing postharvest losses.