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According to Dr. Jason Streubel, Senior Director of the Center for Agriculture & Food Security for the Convoy of Hope, hope comes from being able to feed yourself, your family, and your community. Hope comes from the security of knowing where your next meal is coming from and the ability to turn your focus to the future instead of the immediate present. Hope comes from agriculture.

Moisture levels in soil are important to know when growing plants. In addition to being a necessary component of photosynthesis, the moisture in soil acts as a carrier for a plant's essential nutrients, such as nitrogen and carbon. Knowing the moisture content of your soil enables you to properly balance the nutrient density and correct for moisture issues. Traditional manual drying methods have been lab-tried and -tested, but they can feel like relics of the past as today's lab is tasked to do more with less time.

Soil moisture is a strong indicator of the health and potential of soils in a field, but there is no set value that means soil is "good." The makeup of soil is just as important as the types of plants attempting to grow in said soil to know what levels of soil moisture are optimal for any given situation. Furthermore, nature has a nasty tendency to throw a curveball, knocking carefully balanced irrigation plans out of whack.

How do you know what is in your food? If you're like most consumers, you take a look at the information on the back of your food packaging to know the ingredients and nutritional value. But how can you trust that information is correct? Where does that information come from? Someone like Jonathan Griffin, Public Analyst and Lead Analytical Services Manager at Kent Scientific Services in the UK, answers that question.

Where does hope come from? For Dr. Jason Streubel, Senior Director of the Center for Agriculture & Food Security for the Convoy of Hope, hope comes from being able to feed yourself, your family, and your community. Hope comes from the security of knowing where your next meal is coming from and the ability to turn your focus to the future instead of the immediate present. Hope comes from agriculture.

When the Kaunis Iron Mine opened in Sweden, it was the newest in one of Sweden's biggest industries. The mine contracted with Degerfors Laboratory (D-LAB) for their iron analysis. Before analysis could be run on the samples, however, the ore had to be dried and moisture levels measured. D-LAB had a problem: their current moisture determination methods used a manual balance that could only handle one sample at a time, requiring a technician's attention every five minutes. The ISO 3087:2020 method used was also a problem, as a single run could take more than 5 hours to complete. The lab turned to LECO for a solution.

As with all foodstuffs for human consumption, meat is highly regulated. Determining its makeup is essential to confirming a safe product. The faster regulatory analyses can be performed, the quicker you can confirm the quality of your product and maintain production speed.

Determining the moisture content of meat is one such analysis that helps identify the quality and safety of the meat in question. Moisture content can control the texture, taste, and microbial stability of the meat. It also determines the level of retained water, additive solutions for flavoring, and the leanness of meat.

Determining the moisture content in cannabis and hemp is a critical factor in the growth and distribution of the process. Too much moisture can be indicative of microbial contamination, which can lead to health risks in the end user. It is also crucial to determine moisture content when extracting CBD oil. However, the plant nature of cannabis makes traditional loss-on-drying methods difficult, as the plant matter could be lost to thermal decomposition, resulting in falsely high moisture results.

Working with grains meant a lot of thermogravimetric analyses, but standard oven drying methods were incredibly time-consuming. Depending on the flour matrix, oven times could range from 1 hour to 17. Whole grains could take a full 72 hours. LECO Africa reached out to Jolanda Nortjé, Laboratory Manager of The Southern African Grain Laboratory (SAGL), with a suggestion of a better way, and Nortjé was happy to give it a try. She agreed to participate in a comparison of a primary moisture loss-on-drying determination using the TGM800 and standard oven drying methods.

Our innovative analytical instrumentation provides users with solutions for a wide range of applications. We want to help your lab succeed, which is why we share examples of the processes, methods of analysis, and results our instruments can obtain in the form of application notes. We want our current and potential customers to feel at ease with our instrumentation in the lab, and our application notes highlight the right instrument for each specific application.