Factors Affecting Quality of Grain Stored in Ethiopian Traditional Storage Structures and Opportunities for Improvement

In Ethiopia, like in other developing countries post harvest losses, including storage losses is estimated at 5-26%. Damages or loss of grains vary generally and are a function of crop variety, pest and insects, climate, system of harvesting, system of processing, storage, handling and marketing. Interrelated factors that greatly affect quality of stored grain are grain moisture content, grain temperature, initial condition of the grain, insects and pest and molds.  The main objective of grain storage is to maintain quality of the produce for a long period of time and the basic requirements of every grain storage structure or systems are to protect the grains from insects, rodents and prevent deterioration of the grains by the activities of micro-organisms. Safe storage is one that minimizes quantity loss and maintains grain quality characteristics that may be expressed in terms of germination, malting quality, baking quality, color, oil composition, and many others. This means protecting it from weather, molds and other micro-organisms, addition of moisture, destructively high temperatures, insects, rodents, and birds, objectionable odors and contamination, and from un authorized distribution. Common storage structure used by most of Ethiopian farmers is traditional ones with poor construction that exposes the stored grains to different deterioration agents or conditions and to which appropriate management and monitoring of all the influencing factors hasn’t been considered. Though there had been promotion of improved storage structures, stored grain deterioration problem could not be solved. Since deterioration of stored grains results from the interactions among the physical, chemical and biological variables existing in the system, it is therefore important to understand the inter-relations and interactions of these variables in order to design an effective control and management of these factors for safe storage. Focus should also be given to storage through cost-effective and sustainable improvement of the traditional systems and the introduction of alternative sustainable and cost effective systems.