August 2, 2010

Yeast and mould fungi effectively suppressed with Schaumann's Bonsilage Mais

Bonsilage Mais serves as a crucial aid in the production of highly digestible and hygienically perfect silage.

Yeasts and moulds are widely recognised as major causes of spoilage after silage clamps are opened for feeding, and as responsible for high DM losses.

During 2009, various state advisory publications in Germany had already referred to the continuing unsatisfactory hygienic quality of corn silage due to an excessively high yeast presence.

Samples from the Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Agriculture (Maize Silage Competition 2008) illustrated this: the average yeast presence in 97 tested samples of corn silage was 5.7 x 107 cfu/g FM and thus markedly over the limit of 105 cfu/g FM.

The cold weather in spring 2010 and subsequent summer drought also means corn crops this year are growing under conditions of great stress with the likely result being a substantially increased starting population of yeasts or spoilageindicating fungi compared with previous years.

The basis for hygienically perfect and highly digestible silage is offered by Schaumann's Bonsilage Mais with its combination of homofermentative and heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria.

The extremely competitive homofermentative lactic acid bacteria in Bonsilage Mais successfully compete with yeasts and moulds at the beginning of the ensiling process for the substrate, i.e. plant sugar, and thus ensure a low initial population of these inhibitors of fermentation efficiency. Specially selected heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria increase the silage content of acetic acid and so successfully reduce the rate of growth of yeasts and moulds.