1st Edition

Seed Conditioning, Volume 2 Technology--Parts A & B

By Bill Gregg, Gary Billups Copyright 2010
    1000 Pages
    by CRC Press

    Seed conditioning removes undesirable material including debris and stray seeds from selected raw harvested seed, so as to create planting seed that delivers high yielding crops. This two-volume set provides a major up-date of previously published work. It describes the essential information needed to understand this process and the machinery involved.  It describes the machines available to seed conditioners and explains how they can be installed, operated, adjusted, and maintained to give complete and precise separations for many years.

    All the machines are described in sufficient detail, sometimes with the help of models to enable the conditioner to get good results. The book also details the operating sequence used to properly prepare seed before going into each machine.

    Organized in a logical sequence, it catalogs all the entire field of seed conditioning, to help seed managers, specialists, and conditioning operators reduce loss of good seed while improving seed quality and honing the efficiency of their operations.

    Seed Quality
    Supplying High Quality Seed
    Role and Principles of Seed Conditioning
    Handling Bulk Seed
    Receiving Raw Seed
    Determining Conditioning Requirements and Lab Mode Cleaning
    Seed Moisture
    Drying Seed
    Moving Seed in Conditioning
    Bucket Elevators
    Airlift Elevator
    Conveyors
    Surge or Hopper Feed Bins
    Extracting Vegetable Seed
    Precleaning and Scalping
    Debearder
    Brush Machine
    Scarifier-Huller
    Corn (Maize) Shelle
    Decorticator
    Cottonseed Delinting
    Peanut (Groundnut) Sheller
    Basic Cleaning—Air-Screen Cleaner
    Length Separators
    Gravity Separation
    Stoner
    Width and Thickness Grading
    Roll Mill
    Magnetic Separator
    Color Sorter
    Aspirators and Pneumatic Separators
    Spiral Separator
    Draper (Inclined Belt) Separator
    Table Separator
    Picking Tables or Belts
    Vibrator Separator
    Friction Separator
    Buffel Grass Seed Cleaners
    Buckhorn Machine
    Timothy Bumper Mill
    Horizontal Disk Separator
    Horizontal Blower Separator
    Brine and Flotation Separations
    Needle Cylinder Separator
    Dockins Separator
    Electrostatic Seed Separator
    Resilience Separator
    Polisher
    Installing Conditioning Machines
    Controls and Control Systems
    Operating and Monitoring Machines
    Seed Treating
    Seed Coating and Pelletizing
    Dehumidified Drying
    Bagging-Weighing
    Weighing
    Forming Clean Seed Lots
    Vaporproof Packaging
    Handling Cleaned Seed
    Cleaning Sequence
    Small-Scale and Portable Seed Cleaning
    Designing a New Conditioning Line
    Mobile Cleaning Facilities
    Seed Priming

    Biography

    Dr. Bill Gregg has managed seed conditioning programs, done research on development and design of machines, helped manufacturers of equipment, written operation and maintenance manuals, trained managers and operators, and helped design and install many seed plants in several countries.

    Gary Gillups is President of Crippen International which has installed seed plants in all continents except Antarctica. The level of technology provided ranges from simple portable equipment to large fully-automated conditioning plants for organizations ranging from small-to-large private companies to governments and international agencies.