Introduction to Crop Processing | 4 Fascinating art of Agricultural Processing |

Muhammed Alhassan

This is a crucial aspect in the production cycle which involves the transformation of raw materials harvested from the farm into a valuable marketable product.

Crop processing crucial aspect in the production cycle which involves the transformation of raw materials harvested from the farm into a valuable marketable product. It is important because it serves as a value addition to the harvested product and also attracts higher market value compared to the unprocessed harvested product.

 

This aspect of agro-processing can be grouped into

1.      Grain Processing– This is the transformation of harvested grains like maize, rice, sorghum, soybean, ground-nut, etc into improved products. An example is the transformation of maize grain into pop-corn, custard powder, and cornflakes amongst others.

2.      Horticultural processing– Due to the highly perishable nature of fruits, vegetables, spices, and plantation crops, they are often processed into more preservable forms. Oranges, pineapples, and other fruits can be processed for their juice with their residue used as animal feed, plantain is processed into chips.

3.      Root and tuber processing– The storage of this group of food poses great problems to farmers. For preservation sake, tubers like cassava can be transformed into chips, garri, fufu, flour, etc. Irish potatoes are processed into the Potato snacks such as Pringles.

4.      Seed processing– Preservation of seeds for future planting use can only be made possible by reducing the high water content while maintaining its viability. This enhances the multiplication of high quality improved breeding seeds developed by research institutes and is stored in seed banks. Highly valuable oil can also be extracted from the seeds for various industrial use e.g. sesame oil and coconut oil.

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Muhammed Alhassan