The global potato industry has gained a new specialist reference resource with the publication of The Global Potato Industry Dictionary, a comprehensive softcover volume designed to bring plain-language clarity to the terminology, concepts, and expressions used across the potato value chain.
Compiled by Lukie Pieterse, editor and publisher of Potato News Today, the 696-page dictionary has been developed as a practical working tool for growers, storage managers, agronomists, consultants, processors, researchers, educators, students, suppliers, and other professionals involved in the potato sector.
Rather than offering a narrow academic glossary, the book has been structured as a broad, user-friendly reference guide organized around the real-world language of the industry – from production and storage to processing, trade, sustainability, seed, breeding, and technology.
A practical gap finally addressed
Over many years, it has become increasingly clear that the potato sector uses a vast and often highly specialized vocabulary that is rarely brought together in one accessible place. Terms that may be familiar to a storage specialist, for example, may be less familiar to a grower, student, processor, trader, or industry newcomer. The same applies across agronomy, crop protection, postharvest management, processing, marketing, and sustainability discussions.
The Global Potato Industry Dictionary was compiled to help address that gap.
Its purpose is straightforward: to provide a clear, practical, plain-language guide to the words and concepts that matter in the global potato industry, and to do so in a format that is useful in everyday professional life.
Built around the structure of the industry itself
One of the distinguishing features of the book is its organization into eight core pillars reflecting the major segments of the potato value chain. These are:
- Production and Agronomy
- Pests, Diseases, and Crop Protection
- Processing and Product Quality
- Storage and Postharvest
- Markets and Trade
- Seed and Breeding
- Technology and Data
- Sustainability and Assurance
This structure makes the dictionary more than a simple list of terms. It allows readers to engage with potato-industry language in the context in which it is actually used, while also making room for cross-references and overlapping meanings that naturally occur across sectors.
A plain-language reference for a complex industry
The potato industry is at once highly practical and increasingly sophisticated. It touches food production, storage engineering, logistics, product development, climate resilience, sustainability reporting, digital technologies, seed systems, trade, and consumer markets. As the industry evolves, so too does its language.
That is one reason why a book like this has become increasingly relevant.
In recent years, conversations around traceability, regenerative agriculture, emissions, automation, data use, disease risk, processing quality, storage performance, and supply-chain resilience have become more prominent. Yet the language surrounding these issues can sometimes be fragmented, technical, or inconsistent across regions and disciplines.
This dictionary has been created to support clearer understanding – not only for seasoned professionals, but also for younger industry participants, students, and readers trying to strengthen their grasp of the broader potato landscape.
A resource shaped by long engagement with the potato world
The publication also reflects decades of experience in potato communication and observation. Through Potato News Today, as well as broader involvement in the international potato sector, Pieterse has worked for decades to follow and report on developments affecting potato growers and industry stakeholders around the world.
The dictionary grows out of that same long-standing commitment to making information useful, understandable, and relevant.
It is intended not as the final word on potato terminology, but as a serious and substantial contribution to practical industry understanding – one that can serve as a desk reference, teaching aid, conversation starter, and ongoing resource for readers across different parts of the sector.
Now available in softcover and as an ebook
The Global Potato Industry Dictionary is now available on Amazon – see here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GS4TBB8V
For readers of Potato News Today, the publication represents a natural extension of the platform’s broader mission: to inform, connect, and support the global potato community through credible, practical, and accessible information.
In that sense, the dictionary is more than a book. It is also an attempt to strengthen shared understanding across a diverse and globally important crop sector – one term, one concept, and one page at a time.
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