In this issue:

-  HGCA R&D Conference 2008
-  Dates for your diary
-  WGIN Annual Stakeholders Meeting
-  The Llysfasi Autumn Farming Conference
-  HGCA Signposts - Best practice in grain storage for cereals and oilseeds
-  Three new Final Project Reports
        - PR423 Defining feed wheat quality for broilers
        - PR 424 Potential use of combinable crop biomass as fuel for small heating boilers
        - PR425 Feasibility of co-producing arabinoxylans and ethanol in a wheat biorefinery

Bookings are now being taken for the conference being held on 23 and 24 January at Belton Woods.  Registration forms have now been posted and include a full conference programme. 
For more information go to: http://www.hgca.com/event.aspx?eventId=1030 

HGCA and PGRO Oilseed & Pulses Conference - 31 January 2008 -  Peterborough
For more details:http://www.hgca.com/event.aspx?eventId=1051

Milling Wheat Conference - 21 February 2008 - Cambridgeshire
For more details:http://www.hgca.com/event.aspx?eventId=1050

Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN) Annual Stakeholders Meeting
29 November at Rothamsted Research Station, Harpenden, Herts.
The meeting starts at 10.00 and finishes with lunch. For further details see the attached agenda.

We have been asked by D Cunningham, Principal of Llysfasi to issue this open invitation to farmers, buyers, auctioneers, fruit processors and retail outlets to their conference:

The Llysfasi Autumn Farming Conference 
Thursday 22nd November 2007, 7.30pm in Coleg Llysfasi

It is more than a hundred days since the One Wales Document was published and a Coalition Government became effective in Wales. The portfolio responsibilities have been allocated and the marketing of food comes under a different minister to that of agriculture.

We are pleased to welcome, the deputy First Minister, Ieuan Wyn Jones, Minister for Economy and Transport which also cover the marketing of food, to the above conference. Ieuan Wyn Jones will be supported by Gwyn Howells, Chief Executive of Hybu Cig Cymru, and together they will review the current state of the meat industry and the steps which the Welsh Assembly Government along with its other agencies are taking to support the Welsh meat industry in particular. We are grateful to Hybu Cig Cymru for providing sponsorship for the hot pot which will be available on the night.

I would be pleased if you could disseminate the information to the network within your union where an open invitation is available to farmers, buyers, auctioneers, fruit processors and retail outlets. Should you wish to have further information, please contact garth.thomas@llysfasi.ac.uk.

Thanking you for your co-operation.
Yours sincerely
D F Cunningham
Principal

This publication has just been posted to everyone on the HGCA Topic Sheet mailing list and outlines what is needed for best practice in grain storage, pointing the way to all the HGCA publications that can help. There is a page on treatments with a new flow diagram and details of the different options. There is also a list of useful contacts from assurance schemes and regulatory bodies to manufacturers and suppliers and trade organisations.
http://www.hgca.com/publink.aspx?id=4160

It complements the new grain storage area on HGCA's website which provides easy access to the vast amount of levy-funded reference material to help growers and store keepers maintain grain quality cost effectively during storage. www.hgca.com/grainstorage

All final reports from HGCA R&D projects are available for download from www.hgca.com. We alert you to relevant reports by providing abstracts in Crop Research News along with a link to the full report. When you follow the link you can now choose to download a non-technical summary which focuses on key findings and implications for levy-payers, or the full technical report which reports methodology, provides data and has a full reference list.

PR 423 Defining feed wheat quality for broilers
http://www.hgca.com/publink.aspx?id=4133
PR 424 Potential use of combinable crop biomass as fuel for small heating boilers
http://www.hgca.com/publink.aspx?id=4134
PR 425 Feasibility of co-producing arabinoxylans and ethanol in a wheat biorefinery
http://www.hgca.com/publink.aspx?id=4145

PR423 Defining feed wheat quality for broilers by B. Owens, M. E. E. McCann and K. J. McCracken of Queen's University of Belfast and R. Park of Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, N. Ireland.
Project No: 2858 Price: £7.00.

The aim of this project was to identify chemical and/or physical parameters which consistently related to the nutritive value of wheat in diets for poultry. To achieve this, selected physical and chemical parameters were measured in a wide range of wheat samples, and these were correlated with measurements of animal performance. The possibility of using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was then investigated as an effective method of screening the nutritive value of wheat.

This project was an expansion on a previous HGCA-funded project (Project Report No. 260). Chemical and physical parameters measured included specific weight, thousand grain weight, in vitro viscosity, gross energy, nitrogen, neutral detergent fibre (NDF), starch, total and soluble non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), lysine, threonine, amylose, grain hardness, rate of starch digestion and protein profiles. Animal performance parameters measured included dry matter intake (DMI), live weight gain (LWG), gain:feed, in vivo viscosity, apparent metabolisable energy (AME), ME:gain, dry matter retention, ileal dry matter digestibility, ileal starch digestibility and ileal protein digestibility.

The wheat database used in this study had wide-ranging chemical and physical parameters, leading to all bird performance parameters being significantly affected by wheat sample. Fungicide and fertiliser application and seed rate affected wheat nutritive value. When correlations between wheat parameters and bird performance were calculated, specific weight was not significantly related to performance (r = 0.031, 0.008 and -0.019 for DMI, LWG and gain:feed respectively). However, thousand grain weight, hardness, the rate of starch digestion, and in vitro viscosity were weakly related (r < 0.523 for DMI, LWG and gain:feed).

Using NIRS, the chemical parameters of wheat are best predicted by scanning milled wheat, while the nutritive value of wheat was best predicted by scanning the undried whole kernel wheat samples. Calibrations for milled samples produced acceptable (>0.75) coefficients of cross validation (R2cv) for specific weight, crude protein and rate of starch digestion, while calibrations for whole wheat samples, undried, produced acceptable R2cv for total live weight gain and gain:feed.

In conclusion, the choice of wheat fed to broiler chickens substantially affected bird performance. It appears that NIRS has the potential to be an effective and rapid technique for establishing wheat nutritive value; additionally the wheat can be scanned on an "as is" basis for more rapid determination. A larger database of samples would be recommended to fully test this concept.

PR424 Potential use of combinable crop biomass as fuel for small heating boilers by Richard Harvey and Richard Cave of Rural Energy Trust Ltd , Heikki Oravainew of Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and Nigel Mortimer of North Energy Associates Ltd.
Project No: 3252. Price: £6.00

This report presents the findings of a research project to investigate the potential of certain combinable crop products as biomass fuels for heat generation in small scale heating systems.  Initially, a review of boiler technology and existing expertise was conducted. The five fuels studied were: oats, wheat, wheat with a limestone additive, straw pellets and oilseed rape.  Wood pellets were included as a reference fuel, since wood is the most widely used form of biomass fuel for heating. 

Tests were conducted in two stoker burner boilers at a test facility using a heat meter, flue gas analyser and photographic equipment with reference to existing British Standards for solid fuel boilers rated up to 300kW.  Relative efficiency calculations, flue gas emissions, operational and observational data were collected for each fuel during combustion periods ranging from 4 - 48 hours.  Observations were made on ten small biomass heating systems during studies in Sweden Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg and Germany. 

The results demonstrated that oats and wheat are viable fuels for small scale biomass boilers but only when automatic and/or manual intervention is available to remove ash and clinker build up.  Combustion efficiencies for oats and wheat were comparable with those achieved when burning wood pellets and the addition of limestone to wheat appeared to improve combustion efficiency further.  Carbon monoxide emissions from the combustion of oats and wheat were below the British Standard limits for solid fuel boilers.  Emissions of NOx were above the Austrian limits for solid fuel boilers but currently no equivalent standard limits exist in Britain.  Few existing small biomass heating systems were found to be suitable for burning grain fuels and no systems were as efficient when burning grain as they were when burning wood fuel. A few manufacturers have developed heating systems to reduce combustion and ash removal difficulties.

Data from the experimental work were used to produce an economic evaluation for oats and wheat as a biomass fuel. It was found that grain was cost effective fuel when it was priced at £60, but at a price of £130/tonne it is unlikely to be cost effective. Industrial crop production of grain on set aside land is now not considered to be an option. The experimental data were also used in a life cycle analysis to compare energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from cereals with other forms of heating fuel.  Using oats and wheat grain for heating achieves substantial reductions in primary energy consumption and total green house gas emissions compared with heating based on conventional fossil fuels or electricity. 

PR425 Feasibility of co-producing arabinoxylans and ethanol in a wheat biorefinery by
M A Mustafa, N Misailidis, F Mateos-Salvador, C Du, J Sadhukhan and GM Campbell of  School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester.
Project No: 3186. Price: £7.00

The feasibility of extracting arabinoxylans from wheat bran within a wheat biorefinery principally producing ethanol was investigated. Based on this test case, a framework for evaluating opportunities for co-product production and process integration in wheat biorefineries has been established.

Production of bioethanol is increasing rapidly around the world, in order to alleviate pressure on oil supplies and the environmental burden of burning fossil fuels, as well as to increase national energy security and to rejuvenate rural economies. Bioethanol production in the UK, however, has not yet started. It is recognised that in order to make UK bioethanol production economically competitive and commercially feasible, the ethanol must be produced as one of several co-products within a biorefinery. This would allow scope for more integrated, and hence more economical, processes.

As a first step towards co-product processing and the highly integrated biorefinery concept, arabinoxylans appear promising. Arabinoxylans (AX) have several interesting functional properties relevant to food or pharmaceutical use, are present in wheat bran at high levels, and their extraction is facilitated by using ethanol; this latter point immediately suggests scope for economical recovery within a process principally producing bioethanol.

In the current work, a process for extracting food-grade AX was adapted from the literature. Several possible design configurations were created by which bran could be recovered from wheat and AX extraction from the bran integrated with ethanol production from the remaining wheat. Initial conceptual design based on the creation of an Excel spreadsheet was used to evaluate the different designs and select the most suitable for further investigation and optimisation. In parallel, some supporting experimental studies were performed to provide data for process simulation. Two final designs were then simulated using a commercial process simulation package, SuperPro Designer, in order to compare their economic performance with the base case of conventional wheat-to-ethanol-plus-DDGS.

Recovery of wheat bran via pearling was investigated, both as an opportunity to have bran by-pass the main process and enter the DDGS in a dry state, and as a means of obtaining bran for AX extraction. It was concluded that the costs of electricity and of reduced ethanol yield due to starch losses when pearling was employed exceeded the savings in drying costs. As a means of obtaining bran for AX recovery, pearling offers several advantages: it selectively recovers the outer bran layers, which appear to be more highly concentrated in AX, and it minimises starch losses to the bran stream. However, the fine particles produced by pearling may entail handling difficulties during processing, and the functionality of the AX in these outer layers is unknown. Other things being equal, recovery of bran via conventional hammer milling and sieving appeared to offer a cheaper means of producing AX compared with bran recovery using pearling.

Simulation of the integrated process, considering all capital and operating costs, and basing comparisons on a constant return on investment (ROI), indicated that an AX product of 80% purity could be co-produced with ethanol at a cost of around £3.6-4.6 per kg. This is within the range of comparable viscosity-enhancing ingredients used in the food industry, but is towards the top end of the range. In order to establish a market, AX would therefore need to offer some additional functionality. If a market could be created for AX as a food ingredient with a selling price of £6/kg, the ethanol co-produced could be sold at 14% less than in the conventional process, for the same ROI. The research indicates that creating a market for AX is feasible in terms of production costs if the AX is co-produced with ethanol. On this basis, further research is justified to investigate the functionality of AX from different sources and to establish the potential of AX as a food or pharmaceutical ingredient.