New Bühler machine uses the cloud to find the needle in the haystack – or the poisonous kernel in a truckload of corn | Latest News

Talk about trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack – how about a single kernel in a truckload of corn?

Just one grain infected with a highly carcinogenic mold called aflatoxin can be all it takes to poison the whole harvest and sicken or even kill people and animals, not to mention the waste of having to throw out the lot when contamination isn’t found in time. Aflatoxin often can’t be seen, smelled or tasted, and it’s not destroyed by heat – so cooking contaminated food doesn’t make it safe.

“Aflatoxin isn’t exactly a household name, but it’s one of the biggest global pains,” says Beatrice Conde-Petit, food safety officer for Swiss technology firm Bühler AG. “And it’s a silent threat. You don’t even know you’re being poisoned.”

Since consumers can’t tell if their food is infected, the onus is entirely on growers, harvesters and processors – more of whom are having to fight the mold as it expands north amid climate change that stresses crops and makes them more susceptible. So the stakes are high for the new corn processing system Bühler engineers developed as part of an innovation challenge.

LumoVision is a data-driven optical sorter that’s connected to the cloud for data analysis and uses powerful new cameras and ultraviolet lighting to hunt for hidden infections. The system is such a breakthrough and fits so well with the company’s mission to reduce waste and increase food safety that executives aim to get it to market by year-end, in half the time it would normally take.

Ingestion of high levels of aflatoxin can be fatal, and chronic exposure can result in serious health problems, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. There are about 155,000 new cases a year of cancer caused by aflatoxin – it’s the leading cause of liver cancer in developing countries. And half a billion people in areas that don’t have food safety regulators, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the European Medicines Agency, are being poisoned by it. The toxin stunts children’s growth both physically and mentally – starting in utero, if a pregnant woman eats contaminated food – and the damage, once done, can’t be reversed.

Ideas for keeping aflatoxin out of food have been studied as long as its risks have been known, but technology to implement them has been limited.

In 1960, more than 100,000 turkeys in the U.K. mysteriously and suddenly died. Scientists were flummoxed by the “Turkey X” disease until they discovered the culprit: highly toxic mold had infected the birds’ feed, peanut meal from Brazil.

Reference Link : https://news.microsoft.com/transform/new-buhler-machine-uses-the-cloud-to-find-the-needle-in-the-haystack/