Department of Agricultural Engineering, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, Pin-785 013, E-mail: a_borah@aau.ac.in.
The study was conducted at an Agro processing centre (APC), about 13 Km from Jorhat city. The equipments installed at the centre were namely one unit each of rubber roll sheller; paddy cleaner; rice polisher; mechanical oil expeller; spice grinder; wheat grinder and multi crop thresher. The total crop processed during Nov’03 to Oct’04 was found to be Paddy-1603.87 q; Mustard - 14.23 q; Turmeric - 12.36 q; Rice flour - 17.64 q; Wheat - 8.05 q and Black gram - 8.41 q. The total turnover was found to be Rs. 75,386/- and the total expenditure incurred during the period was Rs. 24,600/- resulting in a gross profit of Rs. 50,786/-. The present state of capacity utilization was found to be about 27% for Paddy Sheller and less than 10% in case of other machines.
Rural processing, value addition, custom based processing
