Maintaining high grain quality during storage A new Decision Support System can help farmers make the right decisions when it comes to protecting their stored grain against a variety of threats. Health © PhotoDisc Following harvesting, grain must be protected against possible degradation by pests and unfavourable environmental conditions (e.g. excessive moisture) during storage. Farmers turn to the principles of Stored Grain Management (SGM) in order to maintain the highest level of quality prior to sale. SGM requires intensive monitoring, data analysis and decision-making. Implementing SGM in the real world is a challenge, especially for small-scale farmers. The Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) rose to meet this challenge by designing the architecture of a comprehensive Decision Support System (DSS). Also known as an expert system, it is comprised of three main components: a knowledge base, an inference engine and graphical user interfaces. The knowledge base is built up with grain monitoring data, reference information about pests and other factors causing quality to decrease as well as empirical knowledge. The inference engine intelligently mines the unwieldy knowledge base, analyses data, compares the results against safety limits and arrives at conclusions regarding potential actions. Practically speaking, the DSS generates an optimised storage plan for the farmer or manager, taking into account additional constraints such as equipment and human resource availability. The plan is updated over time according to the latest monitoring data, incorporating corrective actions if necessary. The persons in charge of grain storage need not be computer experts as the DSS was designed to be user-friendly and can be run on a simple desktop PC. A prototype was successfully tested in pilot experiments at grain storage facilities in Denmark and the UK. Farmers can save money using the DSS by reducing the amount of premium quality grain degraded to low quality grain during storage.
