The Capacity and Efficiency of Official Grade Shellers
2005
Lamb, M.C. | Blankenship, P.D.
Some segments of the US peanut industry are interested in raising the allowable peanut grading moisture content (MC) at farmer marketing from 10.49% to 18.49%. Prior to 2004, USDA had not raised the allowed MC maximum because of concern that the sheller used in official grading would not provide appropriate capacity or efficiency to meet time constraints for shelling peanuts at higher MC. A total of 112, 500.9 g subsamples of runner type, farmer stock peanuts with varying moisture contents were shelled to evaluate efficiency of the grade sheller. Kernel MC averaged 16.7% with a range of 7.7% to 37.4% and SD of 7.8%. Peanuts were shelled either with or without pod recycling during shelling. Based on linear regression of unshelled pod count and pod MC, pod MC did not explain the variance in unshelled pods from shelling, regardless of whether recycling was used or not. The R2 indicated very weak correlations for peanuts shelled with recycling (R2 = 0.27) and without recycling (R2 =0.02). After shelling pod weight means had comparable trends as pod count means. Comparisons were conducted separating data into shelling with and without pod recycling and into three levels of kernel MC including: MC 10.49% (MC1); 10.49% > MC 18.49% (MC2); and MC > 18.49% (MC3). MC3 level peanuts shelled with pod recycling had an average of 38 pods after shelling which was significantly higher than all other MC levels (P = 0.05). Comparing data by MC levels showed that shelling peanuts for four minutes up to 18.49% MC (MC2) would not significantly increase unshelled pod count or weight compared to shelling with MC 10.49% (MC1).
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