A cold treatment has been found effective in eliminating moulds and mycotoxins that contaminate seeds, reports Ehsan Feizollahi who led a team of researchers at the University of Alberta who made the discovery.
It is a solution to a challenge that has plagued Ontario harvests of wheat the corn, making them unfit for human consumption and a risk in livestock feed rations.
This cold plasma method successfully reduced toxin levels by 54 per cent and further research may increase that effectiveness..
The benefits extend beyond decontamination. Treating barley with cold plasma-activated water not only reduced toxins but also improved seed germination by 10 to 13 per cent. This can lead to increased crop yields and improved efficiency in the malting industry.
Cold plasma treatments are fast, taking only minutes to hours and leave no residues.
“With optimization for the conditions, figuring in factors such as the type of plasma, treatment conditionals and treatment time, we could achieve much more reduction than 54 per cent. Ultimately, that means farmers could use more of their grain, so there’s less waste, and from the health point of view, humans and animals can consume the grain and not be affected by mycotoxins,” said Dr. M.S. Roopesh, Feizollahi’s supervisor.
Feizollahi created two forms of the plasma — one as an ionized gas and one as liquid — and then used them to treat barley and wheat grains infected with two mycotoxins that are particularly troublesome in Canada, called zearalenone and deoxynivalenol.
Cold plasma can also decontaminate the water used in the steeping process, reducing waste and promoting sustainability.
In the field of physics, plasma is considered the fourth state of matter along with solid, liquid and gas, and has been attracting attention over the past few years, notes professor M.S. Roopesh, who supervised Feizollahi’s work and studies the wider applications of atmospheric cold plasma through the University of Alberta’s Food Safety and Sustainability Engineering Research lab.
The University of Alberta is exploring licensing opportunities for this technology and further research is underway to scale it up for commercial use.
“These advancements offer exciting possibilities for a brighter future for Canadian grain production,” the university said in a news release.
It estimates that about 25 per cent of the Canadian grain harvest is contaminated by some degree of moulds and mycotoxins.
