Like the bugs they study, Digvir Jayas and Noel White are used to working in darkness.
But the University of Manitoba scientists were recently turned out into the public light when they won a prestigious national award and $250,000 to continue their grain storage research.
“We were surprised, because grain storage research is not usually seen as a hot topic or as sexy as something like health research,” said Jayas, an agricultural engineering professor.
“We don’t generally get a lot of recognition for our research.”
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The $250,000 award is part of the Brockhouse Canada prize, which focuses on interdisciplinary research in science and engineering. It was established by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada and named after Nobel prize laureate Bertram Brockhouse. It has been awarded only four times.
Jayas and White, an Agriculture Canada entomologist who works at the U of M, have been working as a team since 1986, developing their expertise in an area often ignored but important for farmers and hungry people around the world.
Good farm practices, as well as Canada’s frigid weather, have kept Canadian grain storage losses to an estimated one percent of stored crops, compared to perhaps nine percent in the United States and 30 to 50 percent in some developing nations.
However, Jayas warned that Canadian farmers will face more challenges in the future if global warming predictions are accurate.
Right now, turning grain on days below -20 C is often enough to break up hot spots of insect activity and spoilage within bins.
However, if average winter temperatures rise, farmers will have a harder time lowering temperatures enough to eliminate problems easily.
Jayas is hoping to research new methods of discovering hot spots in grain.
Measuring heat is now the best detection method available to farmers, but because grain is such an excellent insulating material, bins would need to have heat monitors every half metre or so to catch incipient hot spots.
That’s OK if the gauges are cheap and easy to install, but right now it’s hard to develop cheap and effective heat measurement systems that could work reliably on commercial grain farms.
Jayas is hoping nanotechnology and new materials will provide answers.
He also wonders if researchers could develop carbon dioxide monitors within bins. The gas is released when grain begins to spoil, and because it travels faster through grain than heat, detecting increasing levels of carbon dioxide may be a more effective way to detect hot spots early.
Also, spoiling grain stinks, so creating a way to detect the smell would give farmers another early detection method.
“That would require an artificial nose, basically,” Jayas said.
Improved grain storage monitoring will help Canadian farmers keep their stored grain losses low, but in poor countries, grain storage research has more significant consequences – potentially providing much more food for needy people.
Many developing nations now have access to the best new varieties of crops, effective pesticides and modern machinery, but often what happens to the grain after harvest is forgotten. With losses of 30 to 50 percent, it shouldn’t be.
“A lot of developing countries have focused on increasing production,” Jayas said.
“In my view, a similar effort is not put towards preserving what you have already produced. These should have moved forward in parallel.”
