Detection of internal insects in wheat using a conductive roller mill and estimation of insect fragments in the resulting flour

Abstract

A laboratory roller mill that monitors the conductance of kernels that pass through it was tested for its ability to estimate the number of insect fragments in flour after milling. This system can test a kilogram of whole wheat in approximately 1 min and requires little sample preparation. Hard red winter wheat samples were infested with lesser grain borers and stored at 24 °C. Infestations ranged from 12 to over 2000 infested kernels per 1 kg or per 30,000 kernels. After crushing of samples in the conductance instrument, the samples were milled into flour and sub-samples were sent to two laboratories for insect fragment analysis. The insect fragments were proportional to the number of detection incidences obtained using the conductance instrument and X-ray images. Insect fragment counts per 50 g of flour ranged from 0 to over 5000. For insect fragment counts from 0 to 250, correlations between fragment counts and conductance mill detection were 0.75 and 0.80 from two separate cereal chemistry laboratories. Therefore, the conductance mill is potentially a good method for testing incoming grain for live internally infesting insects; it is able to test 1 kg of grain in about 1 min and can detect low levels (as low as three insects) of live internal infestations in a 1- or 2-kg sample.