Selected New Machines in Seed Sector

Abstract

In 2006, the total value of the seed sector in the world exceeded 50 billion USD.

Seed value of commercial transactions increased during the period of 1970-2006 five times. This part of

the economy, because of participation in food production, has always played an important role in the

world. According to the International Seed Federation (ISF), three key countries in the world seed

industry in 2011 were the U.S., China and France. This increasing speed of the development the

seed sector and the growing competition in the market, made seed companies to undertake activities

to improve the quality of offered seed material. Harvesting, drying and cleaning of seeds is the second,

after breeding, most labour consuming stage in seed production. It significantly affects the final quality

of seeds. Due to high competition on market one of the ways to compit is to lower cost when keeping

the same quality. It could be reached by using new machines to process seeds. The paper gives examples

of some of them. Based on the materials collected in 2011 in selected seed companies in Italy and

France, some new or already known but modified, machines were presented. These are: combine to

collect seeds of the cucurbit plants, spiral separator in sets, belt machine with across direction of the belt,

electromagnetic separator, multichannel photocell separator, pressure machine for unthreshed dry fruit,

robot to pack seed bags on a palette. The progress in this area consists on either creating a new machine,

enlarging the use of already existing machine, increasing their effectives through using new materials or

their other arrangement on the working place.