SBIR Phase I: Low-Power, Wireless Crop Quality Sensors for Grain Quality Preservation and Storage Automation

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to increase the returns of grain storage for farmers and reduce overall postharvest loss due to toxin and insect damage. Ten billion bushels, over half of US grains, are stored on-farm each year for 3-12 months. During this period, grain is susceptible to spoilage, infestation, and moisture loss?all of which impacts the price a farmer receives at the time of market delivery. There is no easy way to monitor grain quality changes throughout the storage season to optimize for best times to run aeration controls to preserve, condition or maintain the grain. This leaves farmers with a ?gut check? system of driving to each grain bin site and climbing up and inside units. Since grain is priced based on moisture baselines, farmers are essentially selling water and weight, their final price outcome can vary significantly based on how well they managed grain conditions throughout the storage period. In the US, an annual $3 to $ 5 billion dollars (3 ? 5%) of crop value is lost due to toxin, insect and moisture mismanagement that could be prevented through the introduction of affordable and accessible monitoring technology. The proposed project would advance internet of things automation and wireless sensor applications as applied to production agriculture and the postharvest supply chain. There are certain, manual processes of farm production that are strenuous due to time burdens and the lack of obtainable information to make decisions. Monitoring grain assets, the product of farmers? toil and the safety net of global food supply, in farm bins, commercial storage, and barges is one such process. Sensing for when loss and spoilage risks occur, but more importantly connecting and turning the data into automation opportunities before they exist is the aim of this proposal. Cable-based monitoring solutions exist, but adoption is restricted due to physical installation limitations, electricity/power constraints, and investment costs. This project will validate the feasibility of a low-power, wireless sensor that can detect grain conditions and last a full postharvest cycle (18 months). Such a device will create opportunities to track grain qualities across the agriculture value chain, beginning with its use to monitor and automate farm grain storage. By characterizing, and testing against cable systems and within grain science 3D models, this project will prove the wireless sensor?s direct functionality within this first farm application. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.