Miller Magazine Issue: 139 July 2021

49 COVER STORY MILLER / july 2021 Grain in storage is susceptible to threats like pest infestation and mold development that can lower the quality of the grain, its marketability, and safety. To ensure the safety of grain in storage, one must thor- oughly evaluate factors such as grain tem- perature, moisture content, carbon dioxide concentrations, weather conditions as well as their interaction and impact on grain in a storage structure. Novel monitoring and forecasting tools are available to assist storage managers to detect and resolve ef- ficiently challenging issues. The grain is a basic food for many developing countries and faces the biggest losses among all agricultural prod- ucts. Globally, we lose one-fifth of the projected wheat yield annually to pests and pathogens totaling losses of 209 million tonnes, worth $31 billion. The climate emer- gency has the capacity to bring further disruption to glob- al food supplies, as a changing environment brings new types of pests and diseases and increases their spread. Therefore, the reduction of post-harvest loss provides a sustainable solution to increase access to food. Maintaining grain quality during storage relies on the ability to control moisture, temperature and insects. A combination of good hygiene and well-managed aeration cooling during grain storage offers harvest flexibility, more marketing opportunities, better control of grain quality. The storage techniques for grains have been advanced in recent years with the innovations, such as aeration, refrig- erated storage, modified atmospheric storage and hermet- ic storage systems. Most grain damage that occurs during storage is caused by molds and insects. It’s critical to identify the factors that influence their growth to develop the appropriate equip- ment and computational tool to accurately monitor and predict their evolution on stored grain. Assuring grain quality in storage