Why irradiate food products? Approximately 25% of all food products are lost after harvesting due to insects, vermin, and spoilage. Currently, a significant number of chemicals are used on food products for preserving/preventing insect losses. In roots and tubers, sprouting can be a major cause of losses. In developing countries where handling, transportation, and storage conditions are less ad...

it is very important to test and evaluate the performance and ability of new-design machinery in comparison with available ones. based on this, a tractor front-mounted rice reaper was compared and evaluated with tiller- mounted and self-propelled reapers. field experiments were conducted to determine forward speed, field capacity, harvesting losses, labor and costs. experiments were conducted b...

Increasing attention is being paid to using modern fuelwood as a substitute for fossil energies to reduce CO2 emissions. In this context, forest biomass, particularly harvesting residues (branches), and stumps and associated coarse roots, can be used to supply fuelwood chains. However, collecting harvesting residues can affect soil properties and trees, and these effects are still not fully und...

Field dry hay needs to be reduced from near 80% moisture to 20% or less to prevent spoilage during storage. Drying hay to safe baling moistures often takes several days. Sources of loss during forage harvest include mechanical losses such as mowing, conditioning, chopping, raking, packaging and handling as well as respiration and leaching. The general relationship between forage moisture concen...

In some areas of the country, producers store a substantial portion of their forage for winter feeding as silage or haylage. However, hay remains the most popular storage method for forage. Hay stores well for long periods and is better suited to cash sale and transportation than silage. Mechanical conditioning, which gained acceptance during the 1950's is probably still the greatest single cha...