Sorting of Heavily Fusarium Infected Wheat Using a Combination of Air Fractionation and Near-Infrared Transmittance (BoMill) to Improve Grain Recovery with Low DON Levels

Fusarium infection of wheat causes the production of the secondary metabolite deoxynivalenol (DON), which is toxic to animals. Sorting technologies such as air fractionators and optical sorting have limited ability to separate mildly infected grain from uninfected material. Air fractionation (AF) sorts based on the relative grain density, while Near-Infrared Transmittance (NIT) sorts based on the relative chemical composition. We hypothesised that using a combination of AF followed by NIT sorting would increase efficiency and grain recovery while reducing DON. Three wheats were processed through a GCS-200 Grain Cleaner (Apple Valley, MN), fan setting 33.5Hz, into five fractions. The DON levels of the wheats were 8ppm (W1), 15ppm (W2), and 6ppm pooled wheat (W3) (15kg wheat x 4 reps). All fractions were weighed, and DON concentration determined by ELISA. The third fraction had moderately high DON (9 ppm) and was further sorted using a BoMill IQ (BoMill AB, Sweden) with the HHVK setting in the Fusarium calibration. Each of the seven fractions were weighed, and DON concentration measured. AF grain recovery <5 ppm was 52.5%, 42.5%, and 59.2% for W1, W2, and W3 respectively. The BoMill IQ grain recovery results were used from a previous experiment, 50.5% (W1), 46.1% (W2), and 69% (W3; W3 required two different sized sorting discs and had to be separated by kernel size). By using AF and the BoMill IQ sequentially, the grain recovery increased to 71.5% for W1, 56.6% for W2, and 72.3% for W3. Sequential sorting using AF and the BoMill is an effective method to recover significant quantities of low DON wheat from high DON wheat. AF acts as a grain pre-cleaner to remove chaff and debris, and separates kernels by size, thereby increasing the sorting efficiency of the BoMill and processing capability, which can reduce the necessity of grain blending for DON reduction. 

Key words: air fractionation, BoMill, DON, sequential sorting, wheat.

Published in the proceedings of the Animal Nutrition Conference of Canada 2020. For information on the event, past and future editions, check out https://animalnutritionconference.ca/.