How can grain be kept fresh in storage while safeguarding quantity, quality and ecological security?
At present, China's grain reserves have developed from the single-minded pursuit of quantity security to taking into account both quality security and ecological security. The greatest potential for safeguarding stored grain security lies in science and technology, and the fundamental path also lies in science and technology.
The National Food Administration recently held the National Grain Science and Technology Innovation Conference and released major scientific and technological innovation achievements and frontier technologies, including the integrated innovation of a complete set of new grain storage technologies and new processes, inventory grain identification codes, and Internet of Things application technology, providing important technical support for safeguarding grain quantity security, quality security and ecological security.
Safeguarding quantity security
At present, with China's grain supply and demand relationship in a state of tight balance for a long time, adopting new grain storage technologies to minimize quantity losses during grain storage is of great significance for safeguarding national food security.
At present, China's grain warehouse capacity has exceeded 300 million tonnes. Tall flat warehouses, shallow round warehouses and silos have become the mainstream warehouses, and the capacity of a single grain depot warehouse has reached 5,000 tonnes or even more than 30,000 tonnes. A reporter from Economic Daily learned during investigations in various places that, as the level of grain storage facility construction has improved, grain depots across the country have widely adopted the “four-in-one” grain storage technology of mechanical ventilation, circulation fumigation, grain cooling and grain condition monitoring, effectively reducing grain loss and spoilage. Across the country, central reserve grain depots with more than 50 million tonnes of warehouse capacity and local reserve grain depots with more than 15 million tonnes of warehouse capacity have adopted the “four-in-one” grain storage technology, and grain loss and spoilage has dropped from 4% to within 1%.
However, tall flat warehouses, which account for more than 80% of China's reserve warehouse types, have long had the problem that ground ventilation ducts affect mechanized grain loading and unloading operations. One part of the integrated innovation of a complete set of new grain storage technologies and new processes just released by the Academy of Science of the National Food Administration is changing the previous vertical ventilation above-ground cages into “air ducts on the walls” lateral ventilation, achieving fully mechanized grain loading and unloading operations, increasing grain loading and unloading efficiency by 2 to 3 times, while also upgrading technologies such as grain condition detection, grain cooling and pest and mold prevention and control, achieving green grain storage.
At present, China is vigorously carrying out the construction of storage facilities and the renovation of “dangerous and old warehouses.” The integrated innovation of a complete set of new grain storage technologies and new processes has greatly raised the level of full mechanization of the entire grain storage operation process, green ecological grain storage and intelligent grain condition detection and analysis, and will provide important technical support for the state's construction of 100 billion jin of new warehouses and the renovation of dangerous and old warehouses.
Safeguarding quality security
In response to the problem that mycotoxins, heavy metals and pesticide residues seriously threaten China's food security, scientific research must be accelerated. By using technologies such as biodegradation, contaminated grain can be safely reused, maximizing the efficiency of grain resource utilization.
Due to abnormal climate, wheat and corn in China suffer outbreaks of fusarium head blight every year, causing a considerable amount of grain to have excessive vomitoxin levels, making it unfit for human consumption and even unusable as feed. Through research, China has made a breakthrough in the safe and rational utilization technology for grain contaminated by mycotoxins. Through physical and biological technologies, mycotoxins in grain can be reduced, enabling wheat and corn resources contaminated by mycotoxins to be utilized safely and with maximized value. The just-released detoxification technology for wheat with excessive vomitoxin levels in various processing and utilization pathways can make alcohol produced from wheat with excessive vomitoxin levels as a raw material free of toxins; after solid-state fermentation treatment, wheat bran not only has toxin levels that meet the relevant national feed safety standards, but also gains added nutrition and improved digestibility. “This research achievement can achieve the safe utilization of wheat with excessive vomitoxin levels under the premise of ensuring food and feed safety,” said Sun Changpo, a researcher at the Academy of Science of the National Food Administration.
In recent years, with the emergence of incidents such as excessive heavy metals and mycotoxins in grain, grain research institutions have increased their scientific research efforts in rapid detection of grain contaminants, formulation of grain and oil safety standards, and reduction of mycotoxins, and have achieved certain results, such as a rapid detection method that can simultaneously detect more than a dozen toxins in one sample. The Academy of Science of the National Food Administration has developed an early detection method and high-sensitivity detection instrument for fungal hazards in stored grain, which can predict grain pile heating 1 month in advance, and has established criteria for determining fungal hazards in stored grain. These technologies provide technical support for preventing moldy grain from entering warehouses and preventing grain from becoming moldy after entering warehouses.