September 17, 2019

Reduce Ambrosia contamination to zero with customised grain cleaning solutions

by Dr Heike Knörzer, Head of Petkus Academy / D-99848 Wutha-Farnroda

“Ambrosia free” is not only a quality label for bird food. It is an insurance policy against a weed that is in most countries an alien invasive species threatening both health and crop production. When experts talk about an integrated systems approach to limit and prevent the spread of Ambrosia artemisiifolia, also known as common ragweed, they tend to disregard a major pillar.
 

Apart from quarantine arrangements, plant protection measures and crop cultivation practices, proper - and sometimes sophisticated – seed and grain cleaning processes are also immensely important.

In most cases indeed, the species was accidentally introduced into other countries with contaminated seed. Every single Ambrosia seed can produce a plant that produces 3,000-to-32,000 seeds in return. The achenes are globose to pyriform with a length of two-to-three millimetres and can survive in a dormant state for 40 years.

It demonstrates the importance of post-harvest seed and grain hygienisation measures such as mechanical and optical cleaning.

“Yes, the aim is to reduce the Ambrosia contamination to zero, which is possible with aggressive and rigorous machine adjustment. But you have to keep the balance for the processor as well. Therefore, the grain loss or the good seed recovery as economical aspect has also to be taken into account”, says Jan R Hartmann, Petkus Head of Sales.

Excellence in grain cleaning is characterised by a grain cleaning line that consists of different technologies where each individual machine is precise and highly efficient in its sorting task, allows for high throughput and minimises good grain loss. Machines that can operate from Far East Russia to South Ural to Egypt and South Africa as well as in Europe, Asia and Australia, where Ambrosia is already present.


Read more 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.


For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

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