Mobile Color Sorter: would you hire one

[Klause]

If a guy had a mobile unit and came to your farm to remove ergot and fuz and upgrade your wheat from a 3 or a feed to a 1 would you hire him? Would 45 cents a bu be too much?

[BreadWinner]

If it's a 3 the discount would be around 50 cents, it would hardly make sense unless it was unmarketable. The stuff cleaned out would go in the dump and be worthless. Not seeing the benefit myself.

[btjadenlepp]

The discount could be a lot wider than that, but it will vary over time.

Can your sorter upgrade lentils as well as wheat?

[Wheatking]

Does the grain have to be cleaned first before running through a sorter.

[Klause]

1 to a 3 is 85 cents.


The feed is worthless because hogs can't eet it.


Yes it can do lentils. Barley. Peas. Ergot in rye and wheat




No it will take bin run grain. It will take white caps out.... and secondary fuzz infection (pink shit)

[charliep]

I would be carefull/question the value of color sorting for fusarium. Fusarium head blight damaged kernels are an indicator of presense of DON (deoxynivalenol) but not a true measurement. You can have the mycotoxins/molds without the FHB damaged kernels. From what I remember, many parts of the world are more interested in presense/amount of molds versus the damaged kernels.

[BreadWinner]

Get a vomy test done, you might have a unmarketable crop. You would have to notify crop insurance before nov15.

[Hopperbin]

In all fareness if it did work grain elevators would have one. Some grain companies have been pretty good in the past sizing barley and drying for malt. So did they speed them things up or something? Wouldnt unthreshed heads make a flow problem? Just thinking common sense. Hard to see wheat flowing like a pea through a colour sorter. Gotta see it.

[charliep]

Your question was likely not 100 % fusarium but I found the article below interesting. I note in particular the section on storing and handling fusarium laden crops.

[URL="https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/BP/BP-33-W.pdf"]FHB[/URL]

Quote:

Handling Grain Safely
The mycotoxins FHB produce are typically concentrated
in shriveled tombstone kernels (Figure 4). These
lightweight kernels can be separated from healthy grain
at harvest by increasing the combine’s fan speed.
After harvest, it is critical to properly store diseased
grain to prevent further contamination. Dry infected
grain to less than 18 percent moisture to stop growth of
the pathogen and mycotoxin production, and then
dried to less than 13 percent moisture to prevent
spoilage by storage fungi.
DON is an extremely stable mycotoxin and drying and
storing grain will not reduce DON levels in harvested
grain. However, DON concentration will not increase
in properly stored grain.
When storing infected grain, avoid mixing it with good
quality grain. The light, tombstone kernels caused by
the disease tend to accumulate in the center of storage
bins, and hot spots may occur if higher moisture fine
material is present in the core as well. Use a cleaner to
remove fines from the wheat before binning and a grain
spreader to distribute infected kernels more evenly to
minimize spoilage risks. If a cleaner and a spreader are
not available, remove the central core of wheat as soon
after binning as possible.

[Klause]

You'd be surprised how many companies have color sorters for grain. Look at how many have Bomill ' s already...All this unmarked - able grain will find a home eventually

[Hopperbin]

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s agriculture college have teamed up with the Global Institute for Food Security to look for ways to remove harmful mycotoxins from grain samples.Tom Scott, research chair in feed processing at the U of S, said the institute will contribute $1.5 million to a project aimed at identifying and removing mycotoxins caused by fusarium damaged kernels and ergot.Commercial grain that contains mycotoxins must be blended off to ensure that levels fall below levels established by grain industry regulators.The new research will take a new approach to dealing with toxic grain.Instead of blending off infected grains, researchers will explore the possibility of removing them, kernel by kernel, using near infrared spectrometry and other technology.The Canadian Feed Research Centre, a university-owned facility at North Battleford, Sask., has equipment capable of analyzing grain on a kernel by kernel basis.The BoMill seed sorter can sort as many as 20,000 seeds per second using near infrared technology.The machine has already been used on a test basis at the North Battleford facility and will be permanently installed later this year.The $400,000 machine can analyze every seed in a sample according to moisture content, crude protein, starch profile, mineral content, bread making quality and malting quality.Seeds that pass through the machine can be analyzed and divided into as many as three seed lots at a rate of three tonnes per hour.If the application proves successful, the project could have significant implications for Canada’s grain and livestock feed industries, which handle hundreds of tonnes of ergot and fusarium infected grain a year.“During fusarium infection in the field, the disease attacks specific kernels and stops protein deposition or lowers protein deposition in those kernels,” said Scott.“So those kernels that come out infected with fusarium are the kernels that are potentially producing mycotoxins.“The seed sorter that we have … uses near infrared spectrometry to estimate crude protein of individual kernels of wheat, barley and durum.”Scott said preliminary studies suggest removing 10 to 20 percent of the lowest protein kernels will result in samples that fall below established mycotoxin thresholds.Additional research will be conducted using colour sorters and another newly patented fusarium technology that was developed in Winnipeg.The research centre in North Battleford is nearing completion and is hoped to be fully operational later this year.It will conduct research that enhances the nutritional value of bulk feed stocks such as cereal grains, canola meal, pea hulls and dried distillers grain.Its equipment will include hammer mills, roller mills, flakers, screening machines, mixers, cooking and conditioning equipment, extruders, pelleters and vacuum coaters, which allow researchers to use complex processing techniques and optimize the nutritional components found in raw feed stocks.Other research to be conducted at the facility will look at improving the porosity of livestock pellets, using steam flaked peas in dairy rations and enhancing the consistency of feeds such as DDGs and canola meal, whose quality and nutritional characteristics can vary significantly from one batch to the next.Scott said the completed plant will be a world-class facility capable of conducting complex feed research.The centre also includes an industrial scale processing line that can produce commercial quantities of processed feed that were formulated and tested on a research scale.“We have one of the plants worldwide that I’m aware of that has the capacity to take research from the pilot scale to the industrial scale,” Scott said.“That is a very unique feature … because there’s always been concerns that research that’s conducted on smaller equipment … doesn’t necessarily apply when it’s done in a commercial setting. I’ve never been in a more complex facility.… It’s all about being able to formulate diets consistently and accurately.”Public investment in the centre was originally estimated at $13.3 million, but construction of the plant and installation of equipment will come in over budget, Scott said.

[Hopperbin]

That was a jan 2014 research project info. How many people have it? Sounds experimental with a little icing on top.

[Hopperbin]

Klauset who owns this machine? How many?

[Klause]

That's the bomill I keep talking about

A near - ir scanner. It's a different design over a vibratory color sorter but most of those are available with near ir cameras now also.


Bomill are in commercial use in Europe already... I know in one project they have 4 setup to process 300 tonnes an hr...

They are neat... can split wheat into protein groups... pull out unsound kernels... All sorts of stuff.

I was on a conference call about two years ago where they discussed those types of machines in Germany to upgrade weathered wheat

[Klause]

Typical... we are researching it. In Europe they are in full production and installed in lots of plants/terminal if not a bomill some type of color or ir sorter.

The claim to fame of thr bomill is its rotary system...