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ARS Scientist Wins The Andersons Research Grant Program: Team Competition
Engineering Research Units’ Dr.
Mark Casadais the recipient of The Andersons Research Grant: Team Competition.
Casadaalong with researchers at the Universityof Kentuckyproposed studying the
“Incidence and Spread of Insects from Bucket Elevator Leg Boots.”
The elevator boot and pit area are important sources for insect pest infestation
in a commercial elevator.
Knowledge of insect pest densities and movement of insects from an elevator
boot and pit area into clean grain would be vital for a commercial elevator
insect pest management program.
Grain elevator sites located in both Kansasand Kentuckywill be surveyed during two annual cycles for insect infestation levels
in the elevator boot and pit areas.
Residual grain samples will be collected monthly and the adult insects
will be removed from the samples by sieving and counted.
Insect movement tests will be run on seven experimental bucket elevator
legs set up at the GrainMarketingProductionResearchCenterpilot plant to run parallel treatments with different insect population
densities.
Team members in Kentuckywill use the discrete element method to model the movement of insect infested
kernels and live insects from the bucket elevator boot into the rest of
the system.
Finally, partial budget analysis and stochastic dominance modeling will
be used to compare grain treatment effects and provide a framework for
the decision-making process in pest management programs of grain elevator
facilities.
For more information contact:
Dr. Mark Casada at
mark.casada@ars.usda.gov
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Last Modified: 02/25/2009
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