By Prof. M. Sumarjit Singh
The main purpose of soybean, maize and pea seeds for small scale farmers in Manipur is to ensure household supplies and seed for planting, since agricultural production is seasonal while the demands for agricultural commodities are more evenly spread the year, proper storage of food grains is necessary to prevent spoilage increase keeping quality and for monetary seasons. Storage of soybean, maize and pea are one of the important links in the entire pulse and maize production and its utilization- chain. Proper storage of soybean, maize and pea facilitates the farmers to overcome the shortage in lean season and serves as a means of ensuring crop in the subsequent season. In Manipur, the majority of the farmers are small and marginal. So, storage of grains after their harvest has always been a problem for farmers as the stored grains are found to be often infested with insect pests. As a result farmers who grow soybean, maize and pea are unable to store their produce seeds and are forced to sell their seeds at a lower price. Seeds kept for sowing for next season are also infested and hence cannot be used for sowing thereafter. The insect pests beetles feed on stored grains and other stout beetles lay their eggs on the maturing pods in the field or in the stored grains. The larva thus developed from the eggs bore and fed on the grains, thereby reducing the quality of the produce, if we do not use any synthetic or organic pesticides. Considering the above losses, experiments were conducted at College of Agriculture, Iroisemba, Central Agricultural University, Imphal, to bring about a suitable storage method to minimize the storage losses in soybean, maize and pea by utilizing the rice husk ash which is a byproduct of rice.
Soybean, maize and pea seeds were collected from the farmers and cleaned properly. The seeds were spread thinly on a concrete floor under
The sun for 5 days. These were cooled and stored in polythene bags. The seeds were then mixed properly with rice husk ash at different levels and among the different treatments it was found that the treatment at 1kg of seeds + 300g of rice husk and above, there was no damage of seeds by insect pests. This may be due to the fact that rice husk ash which contains Iron oxide (Fe2O3 = 0.5%), Silicon Dioxide (SiO2=96.7%), Aluminium Oxide (Al2O3 = 1.01%), Calcium Oxide (CaO = 0.49%), Potassium Oxide (K2O-0.91%) (Kartinic, 2011). Desiccation or application of rice husk ash might have filled up the inter-granular spaces and effectively disrupted the reproductive behavior of the insect pests, thereby, preventing further infestation on the stored grains. Similar result was also obtained by Rajasri and Kavitha (2015), that dust, such as silica gel on diatomaceous earth, can be combined with certain stored grains to provide protection against insect damage. The dust killed target insects by desiccation.
Conclusion
Seeds could be stored in rice husk ash at the ratio 1:0.30 and above, to protect from the damage of insect pests. In Manipur, serving as a convenient organic & natural method of storage. Rice is the staple food of Manipur hence, it becomes all the more convenient to procure rice husk for the purpose. It would be an environmentally friendly solution and would be promoted as one of the effective and useful agro-waste management practices.
(The writer is from the Department of Agronomy, COA, Iroisemba, CAU, Imphal)
