Agriculture

The problem

Despite major advances in food safety, foodborne diseases, food-related outbreaks and product losses along the supply chain still occur, and many plant and animal pathogens remain a serious concern for agriculture. Foodborne infections are estimated to cause 76 million illnesses, 300,000 hospitalisations and 5,000 deaths a year in the USA alone — microbial safety is a critical concern for the industry.

An efficient disinfection programme can be applied before harvest — in seed treatment, yield and quality improvement, pathogen suppression and plant disease control — and after harvest, to eliminate pathogenic bacteria, control product loss, extend shelf life, fight undesirable fungi, and inactivate pesticides and toxins.

How Kirkmayer helps

Anolyte (HClO) produced by Kirkmayer on-site generators has proven to be an effective antifungal agent against a range of crop diseases that are usually treated with fungicides during the season or before harvest — at significant cost to growers, with environmental impact and occupational exposure for the people applying them. Consumers increasingly want fewer chemicals in crop production, and anolyte is one of the new treatments that matches or beats fungicides with fewer side effects.

A typical application is spraying crops with the solution through an overhead irrigation system, with excellent results in microbial control on plants and fruit such as strawberries, cucumbers and tomatoes.