Identifying Some Physical, Chemical, and Mechanical Properties of Seeds of Some Maize (Zea mays L.) Genotypes

Maize (Zea mays. L) is an economically important cereal crop often used as a food and feed product which are necessary for the human health and animal, as well as raw material for producing high quality protein and carbohydrates products. The knowledge of some physical and mechanical properties of these seeds is an important tool for designing agricultural machines and equipment for planting, harvesting, processing, packaging and storage. Some of chemical characteristics determined and mean values of these properties were recorded such as Moisture (7.747 % to 8.52%), ash (1.51to 1.667%), protein (9.68 to 12.44%), oil (2.853 % to 4.283 %) and carbohydrate (73.953 % to 78.357%) with some of physical and mechanical properties determined include thousand kernel weight (205.582 to 285.680 g), bulk density (0.718 to 0.783 g.ml-1), true density (1.255 to 1.310 g.ml-1), hydration index (0.447 to 0.484), swelling index (0.351 to 0.783), porosity (37.523 to 43.864 %) size [(length 9.080 to11.860 mm), width (6.724 to 8.780 mm) and thickness (4.170 to 5.745 mm)], geometric mean diameter (6.543 to 8.371 mm), sphericity (0.644 to 0.754 %), roundness (0.564 to 0.724) ,surface area (134.426 to 219.978 mm2) and volume(148.551 to 244.598 mm3), by using ten different maize varieties in this study, which these properties of maize seeds are important to design the planter/seeder (hopper, metric device, tube), grading machines and to select members and storage equipment. This experiment was performed in the laboratory of biotechnology and crop science department. The ANOVA result showed that there was significant deference at (p < 0.05), and Duncan's mean results also showed statistically significant differences among the ten varieties.