Abstract:
Mechanical damage of seeds
due to harvest, handling and other process is
an important factor that affects the quality and
quantity of seeds. Seed damage result in lower
grain value, storability problem, and reduced
seed germination and seedling vigor and
subsequent yield of crops. The objective of
this research was to determine the effects of
moisture content and impact energy on the
breakage susceptibility of wheat and triticale
seeds. The experiments were conducted at five
moisture contents of 7.5, 12, 17, 22 and 27%
w.b. and at the impact energies of 0.05 and 0.1
J. The percentage of breakage of both wheat
and triticale seeds increased as impact energy
increased. The analysis of variance showed
that there was a significant difference between
breakage susceptibility of wheat and triticale
seeds at the 1% probability level. Triticale
seeds had more breakage than wheat seeds.
For both wheat and triticale seeds as the
moisture content of the seeds increased, the
amount of the percentage breakage of seeds
decreased as a polynomial. The average values
of percentage breakage of wheat seeds
decreased from 43.81 to 19.88% as the
moisture content increased from 7.5 to 27%.
Over this same moisture content range the
percentage breakage of triticale seeds varied
from 81.34 to 37.77%. Below the moisture
contents of 17% for the wheat and 22% for the
triticale the percentage breakage of seeds
increased dramatically.
