Engineering Research Units' Dr. Mark Casada is the recipient of The Andersons Research Grant: Team Competition.  Casada along 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 Grain Marketing Production Research Center pilot 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