Summary

Sesame and spices are high-value emerging crops in Australia. These crops are traditionally grown, harvested, and processed manually by overseas producers. For the success of sesame and spice farming in Australia, all production processes need to be mechanised for economic viability.
This project will utilise a small-scale research equipment for threshing and seed cleaning to develop the protocols and equipment settings for commercial-scale threshing and seed cleaning equipment for sesame, fennel, cumin, kalijiri and kalonji. The guidelines, methods and user notes developed during this project will be able to be used to adapt commercial seed threshing and cleaning equipment, currently used for grain crops, for use in sesame and spice crops.

Program

New and Emerging Industries

Research Organisation

AgriVentis Technologies Pty Ltd

Objective Summary

The project objectives are:
• Evaluation of an existing small seed threshing and cleaning equipment for its application in emerging industries e.g., sesame and spice crops.
• Optimise equipment settings and calibration of research model threshing and cleaning equipment to inform the development of commercial model equipment for use by the growers.
• Develop crop-specific guidelines, methods, and user notes for processing equipment for use by sesame and spice crops growers.
• Disseminating research results to industry and growers through active communication (media, uninews, presentations during field days, and open day participation by growers).
• Improve accuracy of the research and on-farm demonstration trial crops, that involve seed cleaning and threshing, results by removing errors associated with manual/hand operations in threshing and cleaning of seeds from trial crops.