Grain Marketing and Production Research Center, Manhattan, Kansas

• Scope of work under Recovery Act

Amount: $440,000

Repair of critical deferred maintenance including replacement of HVAC system and components in Buildings 3 and 5. Roof replacement and exterior painting of Building 3 to prevent deterioration of structure and contents.

Milestones - To be updated as milestones are completed.

Construction Photos

Research at the Grain Marketing and Production Research Center

The Grain Marketing and Production Research Center develops new lines of wheat that have unique traits that solve problems of national scope such as more disease resistance, higher tolerance for stressful growing conditions, and better qualities for tasks such as baking to meet domestic demand and create markets internationally for U.S. wheat. The Center also develops new technologies to improve the storage of grain. This work helps ensure that consumers will always have high quality U.S. wheat products at economical prices and reduces the environmental stresses that wheat production puts on our natural resources

For example, the Grain Marketing and Production Research Center is developing ecologically-based technologies to replace or reduce the use of pesticides to control insects in stored grain.

The Center also helped develop the first commercially available instrument to quickly measure many quality attributes--such as hardness, protein, starch, internal insect infestation, color or disease--in single kernels. This first-of-its-kind technology can check grain quality at a rate of one kernel per second. Such an ability is crucial to keeping wheat competitive. For example, if one kernel out of 100 has scab damage, this machine will detect it. Scab is a disease that has cost some wheat growers billions of dollars in losses. Grain inspectors have had to rely on subjective visual inspection to assess grain quality.

Research Units

Biological Research Unit

• Develop ecologically-based technologies to replace or reduce the use of traditional pesticides to control stored-product insects. Multidisciplinary teams conduct research on
• Ecology, population dynamics, and behavior of pest and beneficial insects leading to the development of expert systems for pest management in farm and commercial storage;
• Pest management systems that utilize parasites, predators, and pathogens to control stored product insects;
• Novel control techniques based on a knowledge of insect genetics, physiology, biochemistry, toxicology, and molecular biology;
• Pest management strategies focusing on the efficient use of pesticides, aeration, monitoring techniques, and resistance management.

Engineering Research Unit

• Develop technologies to improve grain quality assessment, handling and storage and transfer knowledge and technology that meets the needs of consumers and the grain industry.

Grain Quality & Structure Research Unit

The mission of the Grain Quality and Structure Research Unit, which includes the Hard Winter Wheat Quality Laboratory, is to ensure a high quality and safe U.S. grain supply for our customers by:

• Conduct basic and applied research to identify the physical characteristics and structural/biochemical components that govern quality;
• Develop rapid, precise, and accurate predictive technologies for quality assessment;
• Evaluate end-use quality of breeding lines.

Plant Science & Entomology Research Unit

• Developing and providing genetic solutions to economically important biotic and abiotic stress problems in hard winter wheat. We will focus on resistance or tolerance to several recalcitrant or emerging problems that impact grain production and/or quality.

Wind Erosion Research Unit

• Identify and quantify the physical processes involved in wind erosion
• Develop simulation models and expert systems to predict wind erosion and design control practices
• Develop and evaluate tillage tools, management systems, barriers, mulches, soil stabilizers, and cropping practices for wind erosion control
• Evaluate impact of soil erosion by wind on soil productivity, crop quality and yield, air and water quality, mechanical devices, transportation, and other economic activities

Project Photographs Before Construction