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October 31, 2017

01/11/2017: Grain preservation with organic acids

by Wiebke Pirsich

According to calculations of the FAO the global demand for food will increase sharply in the next decades


This is mainly due to a significant global population growth. But also changing nutrition habits in emerging and developing markets play a major role. Therefore, the demand for grain and other traditional basic foods will shift towards animal protein based foods as meat, fish, egg and dairy products.
 


However, since livestock production consumes large quantities of grains as feedstuffs, the overall demand for grain will increase enormously.

According to the FAO, grain production would have to be extended from currently 2.1 billion tonnes by approximately one billion, in order to meet the global demand in 2050.

Crucial for an expansion of grain production is the availability of cropland and water, energy supply, climate change, new agricultural and technological developments and access to finance resources.

However, depending on the cultivation region many of these factors are restricted, which significantly limits the possibilities of production increase. A further serious problem is the excessive wastage of food and feed.

Even if there is no reliable information on the global wastage of food and, in particular, the wastage of feed, it is an undisputed fact that the dimension of grain spoilage during storage is exceeding an acceptable level by far.

Therefore, the reduction of feed waste can provide a crucial contribution to ensure the nutrition of the fast growing population over the next decades. In this context, the improvement of grain storage management occurs to be a suitable starting point to protect post-harvested grain from spoilage in order to avoid unnecessary losses. Various processes are available for the preservation of grains.

However, for feed grains the option of preservation with organic acids is particularly interesting. Therefore, the following article provides an overview of the principles of grain preservation with organic acids and presents the new innovative grain preservation acid MAXACID/CP+ by PROVITA supplements.

Grain preservation with organic acids
Freshly harvested grains are mostly not storable, since they often have high moisture contents and a high microbial infestation. The number of germs and the composition of the germinal flora depend on the weather conditions during the harvest.

In the presence of oxygen in combination with a sufficiently high water (> 12.0%) and nutrient content, unwanted microorganisms can proliferate easily. Yeasts, molds and unwanted bacteria are responsible for feed spoilage along with nutrient decomposition as well as for the formation of mycotoxins.

In practice, low but constantly absorbed amounts of mycotoxins often manifest through acute or chronic poisoning symptoms and concomitant performance depressions.

For these reasons, grain contaminated with higher mycotoxins should never be fed to farm animals. Once these poisons have been formed, they can hardly be rendered harmless since they are relatively insensitive to acid and heat treatment.

The consequences of the feeding of mycotoxin-contaminated grain range from lower animal benefits up to serious diseases of the animals. Thus, the microbiological spoilage of grain carries an enormous risk for farmers and often leads to major economic losses. Therefore, it is important to bring lately harvested grain into a storable condition as soon as possible.


Read the full article, HERE.
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.


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