Potato and Tuber Crops

Post-harvest Ripening of Berries and Seed Extraction

• In order to extract seeds easily from berries, the berries are kept for ripening for 2 weeks in trays at room temperature.

Seed Extraction

• As per the method developed by Thakur and Upadhya (1990), seed extraction involves the following steps
1. Maceration of Berries
• Ripe berries are broken with the help of an ordinary hand operated juice extractor or reverse screw juice extractor and debris with seed are collected.
2. Separation of Debris
• For separation of fruit tissues from seed and pulp mass held together by mucilage, the macerated material in smaller fraction was strained through a nylon bag or sieve of 3.13 mm mesh size into a half filled bucket of water with constant shaking.
3. Treatment of Seed and Pulp
• Major fraction of the pulp, which passed through the nylon bag or sieve along with the seeds, was removed by adding water.
• To hasten this process, excess of water was decanted to reduce the seed pulp volume to the minimum and add conc.
• HCl acid to this on volume basis to get final conc. of 10% acid.
• The contents were stirred for 20 mm.
4. Washing
• To remove the acid, wash the seeds with adequate quantity of water for 3-4 times
5. Seed Drying
• Spread the seeds in a thin layer on muslin cloth stretched over a wooden frame with 4 pegs two inches high above the ground to facilitate free circulation of air.
• Keep the frames at room temperature in good ventilated areas for drying.
• The shade-dried seeds are then exposed to warm sun for 1/2 an hour and dried to moisture content of 8%.
6. Grading
• Seeds are graded using sieves of sizes 1/14”, 1/16”, 1/18”, 1/20” round perforated sieves
• Yield 100 kg/ha