About Lesson
Seed cleaning
- Process of the separation of undesirable materials from desirable seed content.
- Done on the basis of differences in physical properties.
- Principal physical differences found are seed size, density, shape, surface tension, color etc.
Method of cleaning seeds or steps involved in seed cleaning
- Pre-conditioning or pre-cleaning
- Operations performed to prepare the seed lots for basic cleaning.
- For example, shelling, debearding etc. in pre-conditioning, the pieces of thrash, stones, and clods that are larger or lighter than the seeds are removed.
- Basic seed cleaning
- Actual cleaning and grading of seeds.
- Many seeds can be completely cleaned and made into a final product by basic cleaning.
- Basic seed cleaning is done over air screen cleaner.
- Upgrading the quality of cleaned seed
- Processing operations conducted after basic cleaning operation to further improving of seed quality is regarded as upgrading operations.
- The choice of upgrading operations depends on the type of contaminants and crop seed.