Pages

October 14, 2019

Advanced grain management technology

by OPIsystems, Canada

Getting the best return for your harvested crop is all about managing moisture content and delivering optimum quality grain. Advanced Grain Management maximises the return on your most precious grain asset by optimising grain quality and value, while minimising storage costs.
 


The starting point is bin management

Sanitation
• Remove all debris inside the bin and on the underside of the aeration floor
• Clean the bin walls and spray if needed to remove all insect “safe harbours”
• Cut away all vegetation and maintain the area around the bin
• Seal all possible entry points for moisture or insects

Loading
• Fill the bin with clean grain that has <2 percent foreign material (FM)
• Core the bin, or level the grain, using a spreader if necessary. This will result in even airflow distribution throughout the bin, which is extremely important for good conditioning results
• Filling the bin to the peak with high FM grain will result in little or no air through the dense core – a recipe for disaster

Think of stored grain as an ecosystem. If quality grain is stored at low, uniform moisture content and temperature, it can have an extremely long “shelf life”. Elevated moisture content and temperature renders the grain susceptible to infestation by internal-boring and non-boring insects, reducing value through weight and grade loss (Internal Damaged Kernels/IDK).

A high moisture/condensing environment can lead to other microbial activity, such as moulds and mycotoxins. Sprouting becomes more likely in a high-moisture environment. The kernel can also respire over time, whereby the consumption of mass leads to a reduction in test weight.

Loss can occur at the hands of birds and rodents. Weight loss can be expressed in general terms as Dry Matter Loss (DML), with Safe Storage Chart recommendations based on the length of time grain can be stored before a 0.5 percent dry matter loss. Being cumulative over the entire storage period, it’s important to know how old the grain is coming into storage.


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

No comments:

Post a Comment