Physico-Chemical Constituents and Engineering Properties of Food Crops

The physical constituents and engineering properties of food crops are important for the design of machines and analysis of the behaviour of the product in their handling and processing. The information on the major chemical constituents, viz; carbohydrate, protein and far content of food crops, would be helpful in making a balance diet. Considerable research data on various engineering properties and physical as well as chemical constituents of food crops have been generated and published in scientific journals, reports etc. However, the information is not readily available to the users since the same is documented in a scattered manner. This book has been divided in eight chapters. The first chapter contains the data on physico-chemical constituents of cereals, pulses, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, spices and other crops. This chapter also includes information on physico-chemical composition of food crops and their by-products. In chapters 2nd to 8th, definitions and methods for determination of spatial dimensions, size and sphericity (shape, size, sphericity, surface area and roundness), gravimetric properties (thousand grain weight, bulk density, volume, specific gravity and porosity), fricitional properties (angle of repose, coefficient of internal friction and initial shear stress), aerodynamic properties (terminal velocity and drag co-efficient), rheological properties (hardness, relative hardness number, coefficient of restitution, crushing load and ultimate compressive load), thermal properties (specific heat, thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivisity) and hygroscipic properties (equilibrium moisture content, equilibrium relative humidity, adsorption and desorption isotherms) have been described. In the second chapter, definition and methods of determination of moisture content along with sample conditioning is also included. At the end of each chapter, research data on above mentioned properties for cereals (corn, finger millet, minor millets, paddy, pearl millet, rice, sorghum and wheat), pulses (black gram, Bengal gram, cowpea, green gram, lentil, pea and pigeonpea), oilseeds (castor, groundnut, linseed, mustard, niger, safflower, soybean and sunflower) and fruit/vegetable seeds (brinjal, long melon, musk melon, pumpkin, summer melon, tomato and water melon) for Indian varieties at different moisture contents collected from various sources have been given in the from of tables. The data presented in the book are based on Indian work and more particularly, the work carried out at various Centres of All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Post Harvest Technology (ICAR). The standard curves for various properties with relation to mositure content and instrumentation required for their determination are also listed in the book. The glossary of food products with Botanical and Hindi names has been provided at the end to make it more convenient to the users.