Updated 08/12/2005
Below is a picture of the custom-built seed extractor we use. It may not look like much but Rosa (our Ag. Tech.) can extract the seed from 32 different field selections in 1 hour.
1 - A bag of fruit is dumped into the hopper.
2 - Tomatoes are rapidly fed one at a time into a chute leading to the grinder blades.
3 - Water (not shown here) is injected into the grinding chamber where spinning blades chop the fruit into small pieces. Click here for a better look!
4a - The pieces flow out of the grinding chamber onto a sloped ramp covered with small holes. The ramp is vibrated up and down causing the pulp to bounce. As it bounces down the ramp, jets of water from above wash seeds off the pulp and through the small holes in the ramp. Click here for a better look!
4b - A solid trough mounted below the ramp catches the seeds as the water from the grinding chamber and the jets washes them into a pail (6).
5 - At the end of the ramp, pulp falls into a waste container which is emptied occasionally.
6 - A screen mounted in the side of a pail allows water to escape while retaining the seeds and small pieces of pulp that fall through the ramp. Click here for a better look!Seeds are then transferred to plastic buckets where they are soaked first in 10% muriatic acid, rinsed after 30 minutes, soaked in 10% trisodium phosphate, rinsed after 30 minutes, bagged, and finally tumble dried in a special clothes dryer modified to run below 40°C.
Direct your comments and suggestions to jmpe@ifas.ufl.edu.
This site was created and is maintained by John M. Petti
