1Department of Processing and Food Engineering, CAET, NAU, Dediapada-393 040, India
2Department of Agricultural Engineering, College of Agriculture, NAU, Waghai -394 730, India
3Department of Forest Products and Utilization, College of Forestry, NAU, Navsari-396 450, India
Centre of Excellence on Post Harvest Technology, ASPEE College of Horticulture, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari, Gujarat-396 450, India
*E-mail: fmsphtc@nau.in
Online Published on 26 September, 2023.
The manual decortication process of Mahua (Madhuca longifolia) is a tedious, costly, low output, time consuming and labour intensive process and injurious to human beings. To overcome this problem, the present investigation was carried out to develop a mahua seed decorticator and evaluate its performance. The performance parameters of developed seed decorticator were tested and evaluated with independent variables, namely four levels of seed moisture content i.e. 9, 12, 15 and 18 % (dry weight basis), and four levels of concave clearance i.e. 9, 11, 13 and 15 mm. The best performance of mahua seed decorticator was obtained at seed moisture content of 9% and a concave clearance of 11 mm, which resulted in the maximum percentage of whole kernel recovery (67.25%) with decorticating efficiency of 98.18% and overall machine efficiency of 88.63% and a desirability value of 0.932.
Concave clearance, Decorticator, Performance, Seed moisture content
