Fumigation Protocols for Safe Storage of Wheat: Development & Evaluation of Cost-effective Fumigation Protocols for Safe Storage of Wheat in Pakistan

Pakistan Produces about 24 million tons of wheat annually. Out of this 6-7 million tons are procured by the Government and stored in its warehouses located throughout the country. The larger quantities are stored by the farming community for their food, feed and seed requirements. The storage of food grain is not well established in the country and the farmers, traders and the Government largely rely on traditional warehousing and practices. The use of silos at public sector and farm level is only negligible. All most all the grain is stored in bags with the exception of few bulk storage traditional farm level facilities. This results in massive quantitative and qualitative losses to the country. The major short-coming in this regard are poor sanitary condition, leaky and poorly maintained godowns and ill trained storage officials. The purpose of the present study is to assess the fumigability of the different types of godowns used for storage of wheat and draw guidelines for pest control. The study also includes understanding of the public sector grain storage problems, covering all important types of storage structures used in the country