Grain Science and Industry Researchers Receive USDA Funding for Chlorine Dioxide Research

May 27, 2024

Bhadriraju Subramanyam "Subi," university distinguished professor, Kaliramesh Siliveru, associate professor, and E. Xinyi, formerly a postdoctoral research associate in Subi's laboratory, and now a professor of practice in the department of biological and agricultural engineering, received $486,000 from USDA-NIFA funding under the Methyl Bromide Transitions program for their proposal, "Evaluation of chlorine dioxide for managing insects and pathogens associated with wheat flour mills, wheat, and flour."

In this three-year project, the researchers will examine effectiveness of gaseous chlorine dioxide against stored-product insects and microorganisms on food-contact surfaces in flour mills. In addition, aqueous chlorine dioxide will be used to temper wheat prior to milling to determine reduction in microbes on wheat and in flour. This is Subi's fifth Methyl Bromide Transitions grant. The proposed work is an extension of Subi's project supported by the Australian government between 2012 and 2018 of more than $500,000 under the Cooperative Research Centre Plant Biosecurity consortium to explore alternatives like chlorine dioxide for controlling stored-product insects resistant to the fumigant phosphine, a major issue for the Australian grain industry.

Phosphine resistance in stored-product insects is a worldwide issue, including the United States. The researchers showed that chlorine dioxide gas can control phosphine resistant insects, and this research could not have been successful without the donation of a 40-foot trailer by PureLine, Bensenville, Illinois, that generates chlorine dioxide gas electrochemically. The trailer currently sits between the Hal Ross Flour Mill and O. H. Kruse Feed Technology Innovation Center on the Grain Science and Industry Complex.

Source : k-state.edu

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators