The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
New scanner may offer barley growers a better return on malting crops
TRIALS: Portable high-tech grain quality monitor equipment being evaluated
Scotland may soon host trials of hightech crop scanning equipment which allows barley growers to maximise the proportion of their crop suitable for the premium malting market.
The high-tech grain quality monitor, called CropSan 3000h, is a portable scanner that is clamped onto the clean grain elevator of a combine harvester to take samples of grain every eight seconds during harvest. The scanner can measure precisely the protein, moisture and oil content of the crop being harvested.
CropScan trials showed promising results at Agri-EPI Centre satellite farms in Suffolk and Gloucester during the 2018 harvest.
In these initial trials, the scanner was used to measure the protein content of milling wheat crops, enabling growers to segregate or blend batches of grain to the desired protein levels.
Trials farmers John Pawsey and Jake Freestone were so impressed they intend to continue to use CropScan this year.
Agri-EPI Centre farms and commercial manager, Gavin Dick, said the next step is to maximise CropScan’s potential, with a key target being the Scottish malting barley market where nitrogen content must be 1.65% or lower.
Gavin said: “The technology offers live information in the field about a grain crop compared to the traditional method of post-harvest testing in a lab, allowing the grower to make field level management decisions.
“As we already know there is a correlation between protein and nitrogen. Our role now is to see where this technology can go, beginning with testing CropScan on malting barley crops to determine if the concept can be transferred to measuring grain nitrogen levels.”
Agri-EPI has begun actively seeking partners for the Scottish trials.
Gavin said: “The early reaction to the potential of this technology from those involved in the Scottish malting barley industry has so far been enthusiastic and we’re looking to firm up partnerships in the near future to get a trial off the ground.
“I believe this technology offers great potential as it may allow barley growers to segregate high and low nitrogen barley, as well as to blend grains with differing nitrogen levels, to bring a batch to the correct level for the malting market. This just isn’t possible with the traditional means of testing grain.”