ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

Abstract. Manual soaking and rinsing seeds for chemical mutation is a slow and labor-intensive operation, which limits the production capacities of seed breeding for scientific research. The chemical reagents are usually poisonous and harmful to the health of breeding workers. The objective of this study was to develop an automated soaking and rinsing machine to solve this problem. Based on the process of manual chemical mutation breeding, a prototype of soaking and rinsing machine was designed and tested to measure the performance of treating maize seeds in laboratory. Seeds were soaked in a mutagens tank and an impeller driven by a motor was mounted inside the tank. When the impeller was rotating, it stirred the mutagens and made the mutagens contact seeds sufficiently. Liquid level sensors were used to detect the mutagens quantity and a controller based on PLC is developed. Results showed that the machine could replace the manual works completely. The time for mixing seeds and chemical reagents uniformly is 30s when the impeller is working at its optimal velocity of 20 rpm, which is satisfactory to stir the chemical reagents and made the chemical reagents contact seeds sufficiently. The maximum capacity of machine, depending on the varieties of seed used, is 180 seeds for maize in a treatment process. The mechanical damage rate of the machine is average 8.1% and just 4.2% higher than the manual damage rate (3.7%).