February 6, 2007

 

Philippines issues new standards on corn to upgrade quality

 

 

The Philippine government has come up with a Philippine National Standard (PNS) for corn to enhance its quality and upgrade it to exportable premium standing, reports the Manila Bulletin daily.

 

The newspaper said the PNS was issued by the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Product Standards (BAFPS) under the Department of Agriculture (DA), also as part of trying to raise local corn sufficiency since the country has always been dependent on corn importation for its livestock feed ingredients. Corn imports in 2006 nearly reached to 300,000 metric tonnes (MT).

 

The PNS also indicates the limits for other contaminants in corn such as heavy metals, pesticide residues and elimination of carcinogenic compounds like aflatoxin. 

 

Pura Buenaflor, quality assurance chief of the National Food Authority's Technology Resource Development, said corn standards and grading is important as this provides the terms for defining grains.

 

quality in their raw, semi-processed, and processed forms. It also serves as basis for merchandising contracts, quoting prices, loans on products in storage, sorting, and blending by producers to meet market requirement.

 

She added the PNS offers incentives to farmers to produce better crops and is vital to a successful post-harvest system.

 

Corn standards also allow for proper storage instructions. For instance, corn with more than 14 percent moisture content should not be stored longer than one month to avoid quality deterioration.

 

Buenaflor said moisture content determines the vulnerability to microbial and insect activity that results to rancidity, toxin contamination, discolouration and weight reduction. 

 

Information on foreign matter (pieces of stalk, cob, stone and other crop seeds) and corn kernels (expressed in percentage from the whole grain) provides millers with the amount of millable and non-millable material. Protein and energy value of the commodity lowers with more amounts of broken corn and foreign matter. Foreign components also provide a host for moulds that develop aflatoxin.

 

BAFPS graded quality of corn grits from premium grade to grades one to four. In all of the grades, moisture content should not be more than 14 percent and aflatoxin level should not exceed 20 parts per billion (PPB) as these determinants are the factors to the development of a group of highly poisonous and carcinogenic compounds produced by the strains of the fungi aspergillus flavus and aspergillus parasiticus.

 

Buenaflor said corn quality is maintained through good agricultural practices including use of certified or

hybrid seeds, crops rotation, proper fertiliser application, adequate irrigation, and proper crop maintenance. Other recommendations for maintaining corn quality are shelling of corn at a moisture content of 18 to 21 percent, separation of immature, discoloured or poor quality corn from good quality, and use of nets or canvass if shelling is not on cemented surface.