• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

How do the big seed producers extract their pepper seeds?

cycadjungle

cycadjungle

I have hand extracted probably 10,000 pepper seeds during the last couple of years. It takes a lot of work, but I was wondering if the big people have some sort of commercial way of doing it. Let's say if I wanted to collect 100,000 seeds?
I see people using blenders. I see a fermentation process to collect seeds. So far, that sounds like the best way for large extraction. Anything better? If not, for anyone who had done this by fermentation, do the seeds separate real easy, or is it more difficult than they make it out to be in the articles? I'm sure I will have other questions, but this is good enough to start. Thanks for any insight. Tom
 
without knowing much more, I would say fermentation is NOT a good method for seed separation, thinking that the fermentation process would destroy the viability of the seeds.  TGhe fermentation process would soften the pulp and make it separate from the seeds more easily, but again, don' t know what fermentation will do to the germination rates of seeds.  Maybe just blendering pulp and seeds and then sieving/food milling...
 
I've hand processed  ????-thousands of pods, cutting open and trimming....
 
dunno, just a guess~
 
One way is to cut open a pod, brush out the seeds crudely and dry them on a conveyor line. After that they go in a huge tumbler to get the plant tissue of. The light particles are blow of in a drop. The pods are used for powder/colouring etc.

This is not worth the investment for only 10k seeds.
One way is to cut open a pod, brush out the seeds crudely and dry them on a conveyor line. After that they go in a huge tumbler to get the plant tissue of. The light particles are blow of in a drop. The pods are used for powder/colouring etc.

This is not worth the investment for only 10k seeds.
 
All i know IS the few vendors I personally know Always have a VERY LARGE snot rag handy and wear long sleved shirts (for when the snot rags are too wet) and (for Quality) hand select seeds from dry pods most times.
 
I guess it depends on your idea of a commercial vendor...
 
A lot depends on pod size,Flesh thickness and seeds per pod.
 
Easy to crush up thin skinned pods that are dry.
Easier to de seed freh thick pods that are larger.
 
I've been told,for premium quality seeds,the less you mess with them the better.
 
Several people I know let pods wrinkle up on the plant(semi dry out to insure seed ripeness).
A semi dry pod ,depending on size is easier to pop seeds out of.
The big commercial guys Use machines as posted above.
 
I assume you are tired of using the snot rag and long shirt sleve method and want an easier way to harvest seeds.
 
As posted above,I think the guys selling acres of plants for seed use machines-a factory.
 
its a physical process. seperating things based on specific gravity and size for the most part. i looked into this some time back after reflecting on how food mills operate.

some seeds are huge and heavy with respect to the fruit or cereal crop that is harvested. these can be mechanically broken away and isolated with vibration tables and sieves.

for small seeds... seeds that may not be terribly heavy or terribly light with respect to the fruit matter can be classified with jets of air in some cases, with vortex seperators(ever see a wood shop dust collection system?).

one of the main things with seed preparation is the drying of the seed... if i had to guess, the drying is done prior to any major classification. once the seed and accompanying fruit matter is dried out, i imagine classification via vibration or air, subsequent washing/fluidizing or seed treatment steps are after the seeds are dried.

by classification im referring to the grouping of materials by some physical means,according to weight, size or specific gravity.

imagine taking a bucket filled with cotton balls and lead shot... throw the contents of the bucket out as far as you can. you will find that the lead shot will travel further given that its less effected by drag compared to the cotton balls.
if you collect only the top 60% of the farthest flung material and repeat this task 10 times, with the same force, you will find that you have a substantially pure fraction of lead shot.

this is how aggregate is classified for concrete mixes and this is how gold is panned away form worthless sediment.

with very homogeneous mixes of junk, you can do very very fine classification with 'particle exclusion', meaning filtration. you start with a stack of sieves, with the largest ones on the top and the finest smallest mesh sizes on the bottom.
you shake the shit out of this stack of sieves for 20 minutes, and you will find that in every sieve you have some amount of very very homogenous, pieces that are virtually identical.

this is done with shit like soil samples mostly. its labor intensive and not terribly efficient.
notice the very agressive control of dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfiT-KKly0c
 
I want to hear a lot more opinions, but I am in the middle of an experiment that appears will revolutionize the way people extract pepper seeds in quantity. Cheap, fast, and easy. Probably can extract and clean 20,000 seeds with about 20 minutes of actual work and no machine.Nigel can guess what I'm doing because he knows my background, but I want to test out every detail about 5 times before I write something up. To be honest, the way I was just treated by a pepper Facebook group last week, I feel like keeping this a secret, but you people here are great! Tom
 
Phil said:
A while back, someone developed a machine for peeling crabs that works off of centrifugal force. The centrifuge spins, and the meat goes flying to the outer barrel while the shells stay stuck in the inner basket. I'll bet this would work well for peppers also. Slice a bunch in half, throw them in the basket, and turn it on.
 
http://www.ipaustralia.com.au/applicant/hall-clifford-charles/patents/AU2010201308/
Click to expand...
centrifuges are difficult to build and ccostly to build properly.

imo, one can just take some over ripe and hence soft peppers, cut the placenta out, and push it through a food mill or sieve to remove flesh and homogenize.

then dry to what ever water content you need.

then tumble them lightly, then feed them into an air classifier. then into a fluidizing bed with some talk or starch to keep the seeds from sticking together.
cycadjungle said:
I want to hear a lot more opinions, but I am in the middle of an experiment that appears will revolutionize the way people extract pepper seeds in quantity. Cheap, fast, and easy. Probably can extract and clean 20,000 seeds with about 20 minutes of actual work and no machine.Nigel can guess what I'm doing because he knows my background, but I want to test out every detail about 5 times before I write something up. To be honest, the way I was just treated by a pepper Facebook group last week, I feel like keeping this a secret, but you people here are great! Tom
Click to expand...
you are soliciting ideas from others...so why not reciprocate with your own? because someone made fun of it?
 
manually do it, i'm sure u can just hire some kids/immigrants for below minimum wage to do it if you had tons.
 
i'm interested to hear your method cycad
 
World's best seed remover
440px-Frisbee_090719.jpg
and the removal mechanism View attachment 21852
images-114.jpeg
getting older but still works!! :)
 
cycadjungle said:
To be honest, the way I was just treated by a pepper Facebook group last week, I feel like keeping this a secret, but you people here are great! Tom
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear about that. I wish you would let me know what group that was so I can leave it if I'm a member. Some people man, I swear. Funny, I saw your post in the ads yesterday and actually sent you a friend request on FB lol
 
queequeg152 said:
centrifuges are difficult to build and ccostly to build properly.

imo, one can just take some over ripe and hence soft peppers, cut the placenta out, and push it through a food mill or sieve to remove flesh and homogenize.

then dry to what ever water content you need.

then tumble them lightly, then feed them into an air classifier. then into a fluidizing bed with some talk or starch to keep the seeds from sticking together.

you are soliciting ideas from others...so why not reciprocate with your own? because someone made fun of it?
Click to expand...
 
Well, we're not necessarily talking about uranium enrichment.... Just a simple machine to produce the centrifugal force. Think along the lines of a large spinning washing machine drum on a spindle inside of another drum.
 
washing machine spin dry mechanisms are actually quite sophisticated these days at least.
they are self balancing in many respects, agitating in pulses until a suitable balance is achieved. when they are unable to reach a suitable balance, they will reduce speed.

they are able to gyrate on the rotational axis a huge amount as well. this requires a belt tensioning mechanism, drum suspension and various sensors to detect unacceptable amounts of gyration.

my moms korean washer even sings a little song when its done washing.

washing machines are not even spinning that fast. 1000 rpm max on the cheap units, i think the high efficiency ones reach 1.5krpm.

i dont see how you are going to fabricate and dynamically balance a drum, let alone a tensioning mechanism and pully.
you would need at a minimum access to machine shop equipment... lathes and a mill, as well as welding gear.

an air classifier on the other hand can be built from welded plastics, blowers, sheet metal and fastners of various sorts.

a fluidizer is even easier to built, its just a conical container through which air is blown such that you get a nice laminar flow upwelling through a bed of seeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig6HnmJANQQ
 
its all well and good... thinking just because something is cheap, its simple. but its just not the case.

you CANNOT use chain without a tension mechanism of some sort. a chain not suitable for washing machines because of the noise and vibrations and lubrication.

i suppose you could for a centrifuge of some sort, but their mass makes them unsuitable for tasks where insane torques are not expected, such as engine timing mechanisms in old cars.

they are heavy and have lots of rotational inertia to over come and maintain. a simple friction fit belt drive is far better imo.

a five gallon bucket is a piss poor idea because of its small diameter. you want something far larger such that you can spin it at lower speeds.

its not even a smooth cylinder. they are flared out towards the top, meaning fluids will travel up and out of the container, and get flung out similar to how a honey centrifuge works.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top