Processing of selected produce
Processing of Cereals and
legumes
Cereals and legumes
• Importance of cereals and legumes
Cereals and legumes are important part of dietaries and contribute
substantially to nutrient intake of human beings. They are significant
source of energy, protein, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and
phytochemicals.
• Primary food processing
Primary processing of cereals and legumes is an essential
component of their preparation before use. conversion of raw
material into a form suitable for secondary processing
The principal operations in cereal and legumes processing after
harvesting are:
De-husking/ Threshing / Shelling
Cleaning (Winnowing) / Sorting / Grading
Drying
Threshing/ Shelling
– The process of threshing separates the kernels from
the stalks or panicles on which they grow.
– Threshing may take place in the field, or at the
homestead
– it may be carried out manually, or with machinery.
– A simple method consists of beating the cereal heads
against a wall or the ground, or with bar. Animals or
humans can also trample the panicles on a hard
surface,
Threshing/ Shelling
Rice threshing Maize shelling
Maize combine harvesting Rice manual threshing Maize manual shelling
Cereals and legumes
–Secondary processing
Processing of primary processed raw material into
product which is suitable for food uses
– secondary processing activities requires and/or
equipment specifically suited for the product
Examples:
Milling
Sifting (Sieving)/ Grading
• Cleaning:- involves the removal of foreign or dissimilar materials
from a produce. This may be done by washing, screening, hand
picking, or by other means such as winnowing- separation of
chaff from grains usually using an air stream.
Winnowing
– In this process impurities are separated on the principle that
their density differs from that of the grain kernels.
– The operation depends on air movement to remove the
lighter fractions. The simplest method is to drop a basket of
kernels and impurities in a thin stream onto a clean surface
through a slight natural breeze.
– This is a slow and laborious process but it is still widely
practiced.
– Winnowing machines operate on the same principle, but air
movement is created by a fan.
Winnowing
Two-sieve cleaner with head aspirator
Sorting
Sorting is the separation of
cleaned product into various
quality fractions that may be
defined on the basis of size,
shape, density and colour.
Most sorting on the basis of colour
and damage is done manually but
the electric eye can also be used
successfully to sort out produce.
Grading
– Grading consists of separating the sound kernels from chaff and
impurities, and may be achieved by sieving or winnowing.
– Sieving
• Impurities are separated on the basis of their differences in
size from the kernels.
• This could be done manually where Hand sieves are usually
used singly or with machines. The simpler machines will have
two sieves: one with oversized holes (which retain large
impurities and let the grain kernel pass through), and one
with undersized holes (which retain the kernels but allow
smaller impurities to pass through).
– Hand-picking is an effective but tedious operation that is
nevertheless widely practiced by farmers.
– Grading is the classification of cleaned products into various
quality fractions on the basis of commercial value and usage. It
is dependent upon more factors than are recognised when
physical sorting is considered.
Grade factors
• A. Physical characteristics
• Moisture Content
• Unit Size
• Unit Weight
• Texture
• Colour
• Foreign Matter
• Shape
• B. Chemical characteristics
• Chemical composition
• Rancidity, free fatty acids (for fat-containing materials)
• Odour and flavor
• C. Biological characteristics
• Germination
• Type and amount of insect damage.
• Type and amount of mould damage
• Bacterial count
Grading
Manual Sieving
Three-sieve separator
DRYING
• After harvesting or threshing or shelling of cereals and legumes
drying is the next important operation to be done
• It is one of the key post harvest operations since all down-stream
operations depend on it.
• The greatest enemy of grain is moisture. Wet grains attract insects
and mould.
• Grain can be dried in a crib before shelling and on tarpaulins after
it has been shelled.
• Drying refers to the removal of moisture from grains and other
products to a predetermined level. Drying makes food grains and
other products suitable for safe storage and protects them against
attack of insects, moulds and other micro- organisms.
DRYING
• Milling
– Milling involves the production of flour from the
endosperm of cereal grains.
– In most cereals, including maize, the seed coat is first
removed by stripping (either by hand-pounding after
soaking or in a hulling mill) before being milled to
make flour.
– Milling may be by hand-pounding in a mortar, by
forcing the grain between two stones, or by using
mechanically powered hammer, plate or roller mills.
– The most widely used mills at village level are the
plate mill and the hammer mill; for commercial
operations, the roller mill is most common.
• The fineness of grinding in a plate mill depends
on the following:
– type of plate and burr pattern being used
– speed of rotation
– condition of the plate surfaces
– pressure on the plates
– feeding rate
– type of grain
– moisture content of the grain
Stages in rice processing
– The various stages in rice processing covers operations
from harvest of the panicle to the production of graded,
polished white rice.
– moisture content of harvested paddy will usually be in
excess of 20 % mc. This must be reduced to 12-14% mc
for efficient hulling and processing operations.
• The normal stages in rice processing are
– Pre-hulling operations
• threshing, cleaning, (parboiling), drying
– Hulling – de- husking
– Post hulling operations
• whitening, polishing, grading, etc
RICE PRIMARY PROCESSING
Harvesting Winnowing
Threshing Parboiling
Milling
Drying
SECONDARY
PROCESSING
Packaging and Storage
RICE MILLING
• Production of white rice from paddy is complex
and involves many operations
• In large-scale plants the machinery and equipment
used are very specialized
– a piece of machinery will carry out several of the
operations in producing white rice from paddy
• Parboiling
– is partial cooking of rice to gelatinise the starch and
harden the endosperm
– During parboiling there is a slight change in flavour
which some people prefer.
– The toughening process makes the seed more
resistant to insect attack and to shattering during
husking/hulling.
– It also helps prevent absorption of moisture from the
air during storage.
– It improves the nutritional quality of the rice, makes
the hulling operation much easier, and gives a greater
proportion of whole-grain white rice
Parboiling consists of three steps
– soaking, steaming and drying
• Soaking
– main objective of soaking is to achieve quick and
uniform water absorption
• Steaming
– Use of steam for gelatinising the starch is preferred to
other methods of heating as it does not remove any
moisture from rice.
• Drying
– Parboiled paddy should be dried to 14 per cent
moisture for safe storage or milling.
Drying
• Two main methods of drying are used
– prevailing local method is sun drying where the paddy is
spread out on a clean surface (tarpaulin, concrete slab or
solar dryer) and regularly turned by hand.
– artificial drying - Mechanical dryer
Cleaning
• An important operation in rice processing
– small stones and pieces of metal can damage the huller,
while pieces of straw may cause an uneven flow of paddy
to the huller.
– All impurities should be removed before the paddy is
hulled. A combination of sieving and aspiration is
commonly employed to separate the light impurities and a
de-stoner is used to remove denser impurities.
Hulling operations
• During this operation the hull (or husk, or shell) is
removed from the paddy grain to produce brown rice.
Post-hulling operations
• The main post-hulling processing operations are
whitening, polishing and grading
– Whitening refers to the removal of the bran layers as a
separate operation after hulling
– Polishing is the final, more gentle stage consisting of cleaning
bran particles and dust from the white rice and smoothing its
surface so that it looks better
– Grading is the separation of the polished rice into whole grains
and broken grains if the white rice is to be sold, or stored for
more than a few days
Stages in rice processing
MAIZE Primary PROCESSING
Harvesting Dehusking shelling
Cleaning/sorting/grading
Secondary
Processing
Packaging/Storage
Drying