The effects of particular factors connected with maritime transport on quality and safety of cereal as a cargo

Abstract

Summary. The article discusses the effect of conditions during maritime transport on particular quality and safety parameters of cereal, in relation to quality management and logistics management. Therefore, transport requirements for cereal as a cargo were identified, and furthermore, threats resulting from improperly conducted logistic process of bulk material with strong sorption properties were described. The aim of this article was to compare the differences in sorption properties between four selected cereal species using the static desiccator method. This method is the standard reference method. As a result of the conducted research, the existence of significant variability in the sensitivity to the effect of maritime transport conditions among cereal as a product group was identified. The most resistant to water vapor was rye grain. The differences between each cereal species should be associated with variability in the physical structure and chemical composition of grains of each individual cereal species. Further works in this area should take into consideration not only the diversity but also the variability of cereal sensitivity owing to the combined effect of relative humidity of the atmosphere and ambient temperature with use of the in-depth thermodynamic analysis of sorption.