The constant growth of the world's population requires substantial resources for the production of food. Post-harvest activities have an important role to play in achieving this objective.
Inadequate storage methods in developing countries still lead to losses in food of an unacceptable degree. It is economical and environmentally to protect harvested food from deterioration increase of production in order to substitute post-harvest losses consumes additional capital, labour and natural resources. Thus post-harvest protection is at the same time practiced environmental protection.
The most commonly stored forms of food (cereals and legumes) are living seeds. They contain a high concentration of nutrients and are easily storable due to their low moisture content.
Insects generally cause the greatest damage to stored grain, though rodents in some countries may exceed this. A high rate of reproduction and a short development period enable insects to cause important damage by rapidly developing from a small number of individuals to a large mass.
The multiplication factor of Tribolium is 70, for example. This means that under optimum conditions one pair of Tribolium will have the following offsprings:
After 1 month: 2 x 70 =140
After 2 months: 140 x 70 = 9800
After 3 months: 9800 x 70 = 686000
After 4 months the theoretical number would be: 686000 x 70 = 48,020,000 individuals, but by that time resources for survival and further development become scarce and concurrence for food and over crowding limits further development.
In consequence a great deal more attention should be paid to technical and practical aspects of storage protection. It has been written primarily to provide practical instruction and assistance to storekeepers and staff who are concerned with storage problems in their daily work.
The proper management of the store should be assigned to one person, the storekeeper. The responsibility for the several tasks like Storage Hygiene, Stack planning, Stacking the bags, Size of stacks, Stack cards, monitoring Sampling, Presence of insect pests, Control for insect infestation through various Pest control techniques and to maintain Quality Control till the delivery of stored stocks.
We will be rendering Consultancy in warehousing which will include the theoretical and practical knowledge on all the above aspects which are very essential for Scientific storage i.e. Warehousing.
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