13 Thank You for Your Trust & Time, Since 1999 Better Farming | January 2025 of far-UVC light. They found that, at the highest treatment doses, 99.999 per cent of the spores of both Aspergillus and Fusarium were inactivated via changes to the cells’ membranes and their mitochondria. The next step was to test the farUVC light treatment against the two fungi’s mycelia – a network of threadlike strands that invade host plants’ tissues after spores germinate. On agar plates, the growth of mycelia for both fungi was successfully inhibited. But that wasn’t the end. “For the liquid and agar, we could just put the lamp above the petri dishes containing the fungi. However, food products are three-dimensional. Therefore, we constructed a treatment system with six lamps that shine light over and around the grains,” Wang said. The researchers tested the system on corn kernels and wheat grains. The treatment reduced more than 90 per cent of both fungi. The surface roughness of the cereal grain was likely the reason for lower treatment effects than in liquid buffer, Wang said. However, the results were comparable to, or better than, previously published studies in which cereals were treated with conventional 254-nanometer UVC light. The team also investigated whether the light treatment affected the quality of the grains. They found no significant effect on moisture content in either the corn or the wheat, and no significant change in the percentage of the wheat that germinated within seven days after treatment. However, for the corn kernels treated with the highest dosage of light, there was a 71 per cent increase in germination over the same period. This could have been because the light treatment increased the corn cells’ permeability, facilitating their uptake of water, but Wang said this idea will need to be tested through future research. Wang envisions grain would be treated at the processing facility after harvest, before it reaches the food production system. “Our results demonstrate that 222- nanometer far-UVC light treatment can effectively inactivate fungal spores in liquid buffer, inhibit the growth of mycelia on agar, and inactivate fungi on cereal grains. If this technology can be scaled up, it should provide an easy-to-use and safe option that mitigates fungal contamination, thus alleviating post-harvest economic losses and improving food security.” Jin received a scholarship from the ADM Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss (ADMI) for the project. BF If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it Manage Your Farm Finances is a free online course giving you knowledge and tools to boost profitability and better understand your numbers. Start today at fcc.ca/ManageFarmFinances Research & Farm Science MARIANNE STEIN Marianne is a senior research editor with the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign.
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