Physico-chemical changes in insect infested wheat stored in different storage structures

Effect of insect infestation on nutritional quality of wheat stored in jute bags, peru, polythene bags and metal bins was studied by following changes in physical properties (weight, per cent damage and density), proximate composition, energy value, non-protein nitrogen (NPN), uric acid, true proteins, feed efficiency ratio (FER) and protein efficiency ratio (PER). With increase in storage period, significant decreases in weight, density, crude fat, calorific value and true proteins were observed, whereas moisture, ash, crude proteins, crude fibre, non-protein nitrogen and uric acid increased significantly (P<0.05). Changes were maximum in wheat, stored in jute bag and minimum in wheat stored in metal bin. Nature of packaging was found to play an important role in determining the extent of infestation damage.