Development and Evaluation of a Groundnut In-Shell Grader

Groundnuts marketed from farms are generally referred to as groundnuts in-shell. When freshly harvested, they may contain some dirt, vines and other foreign materials. Grades of these stocks are established based on intended use. Groundnut producers and commercial buyers use the grade as guidelines for trading. Grading aims at raising the quality and value of the product. Grading is generally limited to measurement of physical properties, such as, size distributions of the pods and percentage by weight of shelled kernels in the undecorticated groundnuts and percentage by weight of foreign materials. A groundnut grader was designed and developed. It was designed to sort three selected groundnut varieties commonly cultivated in Nigeria into three grades based on the geometric dimensions of the selected varieties. These varieties are SAMNUT 10, 14 and 18.Analyses of grading trials indicate that while SAMNUT 10 exhibits the three grades, the other varieties (SAMNUT 14 and 18) can only be graded into two grades. The grader has a rated capacity of grading 224 th-1 of undercorticated pods. The maximum ranges within each grade when all the varieties were considered were: grade I—15.81 mm to 18.05 mm, grade II—12.44 mm to 15.78 mm and grade III—10.60 mm to 13.30 mm.