Ways to Cut Global Food Loss and Waste in Post Harvest

 

Globally, attention was drawn to the problem of post harvesting food losses. Post harvest food loss is one of the largest contributing factors to food insecurity in the world. The poor countries deal with reducing the tragic waste of losses after harvest from lack of storage, transportation and pest control. Losses of fruits and vegetable can be higher during the post harvest period. It depends upon the weather, storage and market distance. For a higher profit of growers and marketers to improve the post harvest knowledge often results in reducing food losses.

 

 

For improving the losses of fruits and vegetable the main objective is to maintain the quality, flavor, nutritive value, to protect food safety and to reduce losses between harvest and consumption. Small production farmer has the option to harvest earlier, when vegetable are more delicate, or harvest later, when fruits are at a more flavorful stage. The multiple harvests are an option that lead to higher profit due to the higher value of the product.

Lack of access to technology, use of improper drying methods and poor postharvest technique is the main reason for the losses the food. Post-harvest management practices that reduce product loss to spoilage will reduce bacillus risks. Cleaning the product, Sorting, packaging, quick cooling, Good refrigerator storage, Good transportation & distribution these are the key to reduce the losses of foods.

Although the biological and environmental factor that contributes to post harvest losses are well understood and many technologies like Reflectometer, firmness tester, Harvesting containers etc have been developed to reduce the post harvesting losses. Farmer training is one of the solutions to reduce the losses of foods, there are so many tools like nut wizard, Ames fruit picker, yoke, leveler etc available in the market, but they often lack the training to properly use those tools and inputs. Post harvest biotechnology has played an important role to improve the food quality and reduce the losses.

The cost of the food is directly affected by the care taken during harvesting and field handling. Most important thing is crop selection and timing to meet expected market requirement. Produce must be transported as a fresh handling, whether from the field to temporary storage, from the temporary storage to packinghouse, from the packing house to market, or to various destination markets. Travel during cooling hours (late night or early morning) to reduce the heat load on a vehicle, Refrigerator transport is highly recommended for the long destination.

In the simplest packinghouse, produce is delivered in picking container, forthwith after harvest, directly to the packers. Every employee should be knowledgeable regarding produce size, grade and defects and packing method. As the size and complexes of the packinghouse increase, a lot of operation and workers trained in a particular task like sorting and selection, waxing, sizing, grading, parallelizing etc are required.

 

 

 

Successful post harvest handling depends part on the initial quality of the crop at harvest, as well as the degree of maturity. It conjointly depends on careful handling to attenuate mechanical harm, correct management of the environmental conditions, and smart sanitation. Proper post harvest system practices will therefore lead to reduction of food losses with good quality and high growth.

Source - Seedbuzz

 

 

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The key role played by science on Agricultural

Agriculture is basically the transformation of the environment with the aim of rearing or producing crops for human use. Agricultural is a practice that has been developed since the ancestral times as human beings tried to provide themselves with food. However, this field has experienced enormous changes in the past with the advancement in technology. Science has played a key role in agricultural with most farming techniques nowadays using one or two pieces of technology. This is something far from what our ancestral used to do.

However, the use of science in agricultural did not start today. History shows that our ancestral used to very basic sciences to make the farming work easier. Much of the land tilling was done by animals that pulled machines. Actually most of the advancements we see today can be attributed to agricultural. Some of the simplest tools were first created to help make farming much easier. With the increase in populations, humans had to learn better ways of farming that could provide enough food for all the community. By the year 1960s, there was great advancement in agricultural with most farmers using selective breeding to help improve the quality of production.

In the world today, science in agriculture is applied on every stage of farming. The US government alone had a larger budget expense on agricultural by the year 1906 which exceeded all the other private expenditures. A lot of research was done on agricultural leading to production of artificial fertilizers which nowadays forms a basic need for all agricultural activities. Agricultural is nowadays thought in schools under different fields. Scientists have gone as far as studying the genomic make up of plants with the aim of selecting crops that can resist harsh climate changes. New technologies such as computer science and biotechnology have been applied to develop better farming techniques.

Science has played a key role in agricultural and one cannot separate the two. For the world to be able to provide enough food for all the citizens, science must be used to help produce better yields on a small piece of land.

Wired: http://agriculturegoods.com/

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Hydroponics and it’s Amazing benefits Over Indoor Gardening

Hydroponics, A modern method of growing of plants in a soilless environment.Itplays an important role in helping conserve water and yet derive yields of unimaginable magnitudes. The word hydroponics comes from two greek words, ‘hydro’ means water and ‘ponics’ means labor. Briefly, growing the plants with less water, which involves less labour as well. ItGives grower effective control over the environment. Plants can be grown in plain nutrient solution or in sterile substrates.Hydroponic produce has all the macro-micronutrients that are needed by the human body.Hydroponicscan reduce irrigation water usage by 70% to 90% by recycling the run-off water.If you are looking to get benefit from hydroponic indoor gardening for flowers, own vegetables or other plants, consult the guide below to learn about the various advantages of this system.

Less Maintenance and Plants are relatively safe

Nowadays, technology is changing by leaps and bounds, same we can see in gardening sector. People are searching for low cost, less labour, Water saving techniques, less space gardening and more, so now people are switching soilless gardening in turn Hydroponics, is one of the famous Methods in modern gardening.Plants are Nature’s greatest factories, Powered by light from the sun, plants combine the earth’s most basic chemical elements with water and gases in the air to create food and energy for growth. Hydroponic plants are grown with very low cost and less maintenance. We can easily manageHumidity, CO2, lights, and plant feeding and watering,water, light, oxygen, nutrients, and carbon-dioxide in indoor planting.

Lower prices and less maintenance are relatively safe

Plants Soil provides four needs to the plants is - water,nutrients, Oxygen, and plant root system. There is no physiological difference between hydroponics plants and soil plants. Hydroponics Plants are Nature’s greatest gift, Powered by light of sun, water, and combine the earth most basic chemical. Plants wants naturally power and effort, using hydro system the basic need of plants is fulfill with very low cost. Hydroponic system is easily managed and easily transported. The hydroponic plants only need a few basic parts to built is-

• Growing chamber
• Submersible Pump
• Reservoir
• Grow lights
• Delivery system
• Simple timber
• Air pump

Compare to soil plants, hydro system is cheaper and easily managed because of Hydroponics plants needs fewer resources and less effort.

50% less land to grow the same amount of crops

The Important advantage of hydroponics over soil growth is the absence of weeds and pests. We are providing Nutrients directly to the roots of plants, so the plants will focus its energy instead on growing foliage and required a minimal root system. Soils plants focus on seek out the neutrinos in the soil, so they grow long extensive root system. Hydroponics takes up to less land to grow the same amount of crops.

Climate Control

With technology, we can easily control the climate. Temperature is very important for grow the plants, plants cannot grow properly if water is too cold or too hot. There are so many low cost equipment is available in the market, so with the help of equipment you can easily manage temperature. For indoor gardening use supplemental lighting, control humidity, use water heater to maintain water temperature.

Want 90% less water than traditional soil systems

As water becomes sparing, and important as a resource, Water saving technologies like hydroponics is needed now and is poised to increase in time. Indoor gardening is required only 10% of water is growing in soil. Evaporation or occasional changes to the feeding solution are the only reason to lost water.

Security

The first step to setting up your hydroponics grow, especially if the grow is in your home is to secure grows behind a locking door. When you are not in your home so its little bit practices such as locking the door and keeping your grow facility out of reach for children and pets. Also airlock helps to prevent contamination from outside pollutants while allowing gases to escape during fermentation.

Enjoyable and healthy Environment

Gardening is the most popular hobbies in the world. Hydroponics gardening brings it indoors and share it with everyone. Creating beautiful, productivity gardens are giving you relaxing and psychological benefits. Indoor plants are giving you healthy environments with a low cost investment and maintenance.

Set up your own Lab Coat and enjoy gardening

You can start your seeds any way you like. Put yourself on a lab coat in your home and start enjoying the benefits of indoor gardening at any scale. Almost garden environment you can imagine can be created using today’s home hydroponics.  There are no limits to Indoor gardening, but your imagination.

Wired : Seedbuzz

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World’s Largest Indoor Farm is 100 Times More Productive

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. But the freshest news from the farm: a new facility using the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China on the agenda for subsequent near-future builds.

In the currently-completed setup, customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up to two and half times faster, one of the many innovations co-developed  in this enterprise by Shigeharu Shimamura, the man who helped turn a former semiconductor factory into the planet’s biggest interior factory farm.

 The specific idea to deploy it at this time and in this place grew out of a disaster: the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that shook the island nation, causing area food shortages in general and this building to be abandoned in particular. Turning it into an indoor farm both gave the structure a new purpose and has helped replace needed fresh, healthy and locally-grown greens.

Shimamura has shortened the cycle of days and nights in this artificial environment, growing food faster, while optimizing temperature, lighting and humidity and maximizing vertical square footage in this vast interior space (about half the size of a football field). No water is lost to soil and a core-less lettuce variant reduces waste.

Currently, the process is “only half automated. Machines do some work, but the picking part is done manually. In the future, though, I expect an emergence of harvesting robots. For example, a robot that can transplant seedlings, or for cutting and harvesting, or transporting harvested produce to be packaged.”

With a long-standing passion for produce production, he “got the idea for his indoor farm as a teenager, when he visited a ‘vegetable factory’ at the Expo ’85 world’s fair in Tsukuba, Japan. He went on to study plant physiology at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, and in 2004 started an indoor farming company called Mirai, which in Japanese means ‘future."

Shimamura continues to think about future refinements, applications and expansions: “I believe that, at least technically, we can produce almost any kind of plant in a factory. But what makes most economic sense is to produce fast-growing vegetables that can be sent to the market quickly. That means leaf vegetables for us now. In the future, though, we would like to expand to a wider variety of produce. It’s not just vegetables we are thinking about, though. The factory can also produce medicinal plants. I believe that there is a very good possibility we will be involved in a variety of products soon.”

The beauty of this development lies partly in its versatility – since it deals in climate-controlled spaces and replicable conditions, a solution of this sort can be deployed anywhere in the world to address food shortages of the present and future. Saving space, indoor vertical farms are also good candidates for local food production in crowded and high-cost urban areas around the globe. Aforementioned strides in waste and power reduction also make these techniques and approaches far more sustainable and cost-efficient.

Ultimately, the hope (and goal) is to refine the system and apply it in other areas where resources and/or space are scarce or where weather is problematic, from developing countries to developed cities. Indeed, the same team is already building anew in densely-packed Hong Kong, where real estate is extremely expensive and local food harder to come by as well.

Reference:- weburbanist.com by Urbanist

Use of Machines and Tools in Today’s Farming Techniques

New technologies change the world its also work for agriculture field. Sometimes

you are out in the middle of nowhere and need to make an unexpected repair, but you don’t have the right tools. Not a problem for a farmer. In a pinch you can make something else work for you 9 times out of 10.

Farmers are also great at adopting new technology. Nowadays machine and  tools on many farm, ranches and agriculture based company are very sophisticated. From tractors that drive themselves to cows that text, the modern farmer’s toolbox contains a host of cool toys.

Here are few of the most advanced agricultural technologies using today:

Advanced Tractors on Autopilot

Tractors are the power of in agriculture. Thanks to GPS tractors, combines, sprayers and more can accurately drive themselves through the field. After the user has told the onboard computer system how wide a path a given piece of equipment will cover he will drive a short distance setting A & B points to make a perfect line. Then the GPS system will have a track to follow and it extrapolates that line into parallel lines set apart by the width of the tool in use.

These systems are capable of tracking curved lines as well. The tracking system is tied to the tractor’s steering, automatically keeping it on track freeing the operator from driving. This allows the operator to keep a closer eye on other things. Guidance is great for tillage because it removes human error from overlap, saving fuel and equipment hours. Trust me when I tell you that once you starting auto tracking, you’ll never go back manual steering.

Time And Effort Saving Technology Sugarcane Harvester

The machine, originally developed in the 1920s. The  huge market for cane harvester in India. Demand for such machines is expected to grow with rising cost of farmer. Harvesting of sugarcane at a proper time i.e., peak maturity, by adopting right technique is necessary to realize maximum weight of the malleable canes produced with least possible field losses under the given growing environment.

On the other hand harvesting either under-aged or over-aged cane with improper method of harvesting leads to loss in cane yield, sugar recovery, poor juice quality and problems in milling due to extraneous matter.

Therefore, proper harvesting should ensure:-

·         To harvest the cane at peak maturity.

·         Cutting cane to ground level so that the bottom sugar rich internodes are harvested which add to yield and sugar

·         De-topping at appropriate height so that the top immature internodes are eliminated

·         Proper cleaning of the cane i.e., removing the extraneous matter such as leaves, trash, roots etc.

·         Quick disposal of the harvested cane to factory

Amazing Swath Control  and Variable Rate Technology

Building on GPS technology are swath control and VRT. This is where guidance really begins to show a return on investment. Swath control is just what it sounds like. The farmer is controlling the size of the swath a given piece of equipment takes through the field. This video is a great visual representation of how swath control works.

The savings come from using less inputs like seed, fertilizer, herbicides, etc. Since the size and shapes of fields are irregular you are bound to overlap to some extent in every application. Thanks to GPS mapping the equipment in the field already knows where it has been. Swath control shuts off sections of the applicator as it enters the overlap area, saving the farmer from applying twice the inputs on the same piece of ground.

Saving a Lot to use Vertical Farming

A natural extension of urban agriculture, vertical farms would cultivate plant or animal life within dedicated or mixed-use skyscrapers in urban settings. Using techniques similar to glass houses, vertical farms could augment natural light using energy-efficient lighting. The advantages are numerous, including year-round crop production, protection from weather, support urban food autonomy and reduced transport costs.

Sensing How Your Crop Is Feeling

Crop sensors is taking variable rate technology to the next level. Instead of making a prescription fertilizer map for a field before you go out to apply it, crop sensors tell application equipment how much to apply in real time. Optical sensors are able to see how much fertilizer a plant may need based on the amount of light reflected back to the sensor. I haven’t seen one of these systems in operation yet, but I’m keeping a close eye on them. It’s fairly new and pretty expensive, but I see huge potential here. Crop sensors are going to help farmers apply fertilizer in a very effective manner, maximizing uptake and reducing potential leaching and runoff into groundwater.

Old but Gold Biotechnology

Biotech or genetic engineering  is not new tech most of the farmer aware of this technology, it is a very important tool with much more potential and effective yet to be unleashed. The other would likely be insect resistant traits. Crops can be made to express toxins that control particular pests according to requirement. Many employ Bt toxin that is the same toxin found in some organic pesticides. That means a farmer won’t have to make a pass through his fields to apply pesticide, which not only saves on pesticide, but fuel, labor, and wear on equipment too.

New biotech coming online right now are things like drought resistant traits and nitrogen use efficiency. What does that mean? In short it means that crops are going to be able to protect more potential yield in drought conditions is helpful for farmers. Another way to look at it would be that farmers who irrigate their crops can cut back on water use and not see yields suffer. Nitrogen use efficiency is a lot like that except you’re doing it with fertilizer instead of water. A single crop variety can be made to express one, two, three or potentially even all of these traits in a single

Physiological Changes In Oat Seeds Aged At Different Moisture Contents

Oats are the fifth largest cereal crop in the world. China, as one of the cradle lands for oats, produces about 700 thousand tons per year. However, the oat consumption in China is very low so far. Besides consumer's habits, one critical aspect is a lack of detailed information on the dietary advantages of oats grown in China. Many studies carried out in the world have shown that oats are an all-value cereal with high quality protein and fatty acids. Unlike other cereal proteins, oat seed protein has poor solubility at neutral and slightly acidic pH. The properties of oat protein concentrate and iso-late have been improved through modification by chemical and exogenous enzymes , but these methods are high cost, require complex treatments and often result in bitterness in the final product In recent years, Oats have attracted research and commercial attention mainly due to their high contents of 0- glucan and phenolic compounds with high antioxidant activities 

Seeds are at the peak of quality at the time of physiological maturity. After this stage, the seed declines in vigor until it eventually dies Seed vigor, which is one of the measures of seed quality, has been the focus of much research in recent years. Oxygen radical, antioxidant enzyme and membrane lipid peroxidation levels were measured in order to explore the intrinsic mechanisms of deterioration in oat seeds stored for 6 and 12 months at 4°C with different moisture contents. Seeds of different moisture contents were also aged for 48 hours at 45°C. Germination declined significantly the higher the seed moisture content in all three treatments. Similar trends of declining activities of catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) as moisture content increased were observed. In accordance with the antioxidant enzyme activity change, O2 production rate and malondialdehyde (MDA) content increased in the HTA seeds as moisture content increased, indicating that antioxidant systems could play an important role in determining the level of seed deterioration under HTA. However, similar O2·- production rate and MDA content change with changes in moisture content were not observed in either LTS6 and LTS12 seeds.

Oats are the fifth largest cereal crop in the world. China, as one of the cradle lands for oats, produces about 700 thousand tons per year. However, the oat consumption in China is very low so far. Besides consumer's habits, one critical aspect is a lack of detailed information on the dietary advantages of oats grown in China. Many studies carried out in the world have shown that oats are an all-value cereal with high quality protein and fatty acids. Unlike other cereal proteins, oat seed protein has poor solubility at neutral and slightly acidic pH. The properties of oat protein concentrate and iso-late have been improved through modification by chemical and exogenous enzymes , but these methods are high cost, require complex treatments and often result in bitterness in the final product In recent years, Oats have attracted research and commercial attention mainly due to their high contents of 0- glucan and phenolic compounds with high antioxidant activities 

The process of cereal seed germination has been used for centuries for the purpose of softening the kernel structure, improving its nutritional value, and reducing anti-nutritional effects. In fact, the germination process is also one of methods used to improve the functionality of oat seed protein. During germination, oat seed proteins were de-graded to increase the soluble protein content , and the oat protein properties were improved without any chemical modifications being required. After germination and subsequent drying, oat malts can be used as good replacements for barley malt in the brewing industry, and also can be used as ingredients in some convenience foods .

The chemical composition of malted oat seeds depends on the conditions and the level of germination,  and its sensory pro-file depends on the processing parameters of subsequent drying such as drying speed and temperature profile, as well as drying methods. Therefore, the level of germination and drying will affect oat product quality and commercial utilization.

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