Detection of mechanical damage to soybean seed surface using ferric chloride test

Abstract

The soybean seed is very susceptible to mechanical damage due to very thin seed coat. An experiment was conducted to study the mechanical damage due to different post harvesting operations using ferric chloride test. From study it was observed that there were significant differences in mechanical damage to soybean seed due to different methods of threshing and processing. Three soybean varieties viz ., JS-335, JS-9305 and JS-9560 were harvested and threshed with stick beating, multicrop thresher and combine harvester .The mechnical damage detected by ferric chloride test showed the lowest damage in variety JS-9305 (11.93 %). Among the threshing methods, the lowest mechanical damage was recorded in stick beating (9.69 %). The interaction effect of varieties, threshing methods and processing locations showed the variety JS- 9305 when threshed with stick beatig and seed collected before processing recorded the lowest mechanical damage (6.00 %).