By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent

AMES, Iowa — In a collaborative effort with the University of Minnesota (UM), Iowa State University (ISU) is leading the nation’s first two-year study of extensively monitored turkey-house air emissions for the United States turkey industry.

“Ultimately, this study will contribute to the advancement of basic science and inventory on air emissions from turkey production facilities, and impact the U.S. turkey and agricultural industry by helping (to) sustain its competitiveness and prosperity in the global economy,” said Hongwei Xin, ISU professor of agricultural and biosystems eningeering and principal investigator of the project, which started last month.

“This project will help establish an objective, urgently needed database of ammonia and particulate matter emission factors from commercial turkey operations typical of the U.S. turkey industry,” he said.

Funded by a $500,000 grant from USDA’s National Research Initiative Program on air quality, with additional support from the Iowa Turkey Federation (ITF), the project will measure air emissions from two Midwest turkey production units.

“Considerable progress has been made towards [the] collection of baseline data on air emissions from U.S. animal feeding operations, including broilers, laying hens and swine,” Xin said.
“This is the first federally-funded project that collects air emissions from U.S. turkey operations.”

According to Gretta Irwin, ITF executive director and home economist for the Iowa Turkey Marketing Council, the project was the idea of the ITF Research Committee, in response to “the desire of Iowa’s turkey growers to better understand the air quality inside and outside their turkey barns.

“We spent a year talking with Iowa and national turkey growers on this project – how it should be conducted and how it should be funded,” she added.

Xin said the project will continuously measure emissions of ammonia and particulate matter from two mechanically ventilated turkey barns in Iowa and Minnesota for one year.

“The actual field monitoring will last one full year to account for the effects of bird age, litter condition (new vs. built-up) and seasonal weather,” he said. “[But] the total duration of the project is two years, which includes instrumentation of the monitored barns and final data analysis.”

For security reasons, Xin said the project’s first unit is in an undisclosed location at a commercial tom turkey operation in central Iowa for the protection of the monitoring equipment; the other is at a University of Minnesota research farm near Rosemount, Minn., where hen turkeys are grown.

“This will give the project a very sound representation of the growing facilities and styles in the Midwest,” Irwin said.
At the Iowa site, part of an existing barn with mostly natural ventilation will be modified into a mechanically ventilated facility. At the Minnesota site, the mechanical ventilation system of the “grower” section would be increased to handle turkeys through market weight.

Xin said both site modifications would provide more precise airflow measurements and quantification of the emissions, and the naturally ventilated portion of the barns would be used to set the ventilation rate for the monitored sections. In addition, the project would monitor the indoor air quality at several locations inside the natural ventilation section, using state-of-the-art mobile air emissions monitoring labs developed at ISU, which Xin added would make continuous monitoring possible.

As head of the project, Xin will be working with fellow ISU colleagues, directing the implementation of the ISU portion of the project, and supervising the installation and calibration of monitoring instruments, data collection and analysis, quality assurance and quality control. Xin will also be serving as the contact point between ISU and UM collaborators, managing the project budget and providing technical reports.

Other researchers from ISU’s agricultural and biosystems engineering department involved in the project include Hong Li, postdoctoral research associate; Robert Burns, associate professor; Steve Hoff, professor; Jay Harmon, professor; Jacek Koziel, assistant professor; and Juliano De Abreu, doctoral graduate student.

Collaborators at UM are Larry Jacobson, professor and agricultural engineer, and Sally Noll, professor and poultry nutritionist.

“At that site, we have five facilities for conducting turkey nutrition and management research,” said Noll, whose primary role in the project will be assisting with obtaining measurements from the UM site. “One of the facilities is used for demonstration of turkey production and represents a scaled-down commercial facility.”

As the nation’s leading turkey producer, Minnesota has a strong interest in the collection of baseline air emissions data for turkey operations, Noll said.

“Both Drs. Jacobson and Xin have extensive expertise and background in conducting this research,” she said. “Conducting the project at two locations will allow data to be collected simultaneously across a broader geographical area and [will be] of interest to turkey producers in Iowa and Minnesota.”

The study announcement comes on the heels of Iowa’s State Board of Regents’ June 12 approval of the ISU College of Agriculture’s name change to the “College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.”