Assessment of insect infestation and damage to stored grains and their products.

The need to save the stoled grains and their
products from insect damage is being increasingly
realized. In some countries public opinion
against insect infestation is so strong that it has
become necessary to reject grains or their products
carrying infestation beyond certain limits.
Though this serves, to a certain extent, as a
punishment for indifferent storage or failure to
adopt proper protective measures, it also necessitates
the development of simple methods for the
assessment of the extent of such infestation.
In India, the chief me:hod employed to find
out the extent of d~mage in the grain appears to
be only that of counting the damaged kernels as
suggested by Sontakayl and others2, 3. The
method is laborious when used for the grains
damaged by boring insects and does not differentiate
between slightly and heavily bored grains.
Further, it cannot be employed for del'ermining
'the damage to the milled grain and grain products.
Recentlv, a number of methods for the detection
of insect damage and infestation have been developed
at this Institute and elsewhere and it is
the object of this paper to discuss the relative
merits of the available methods.