COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED EAR-CORN DRYING TECHNIQUES

Drying of the ear-corn is a difficult process, which usually depends on manager experience. As a result, there is large chance to improve the method in terms of preserving quality, decreasing cost, and increasing capacity. A study was conducted at Okara and Pind Dadan Khan during the October 2010 and June 2011, respectively. The objectives of study were to evaluate selected ear-corn drying techniques namely sun drying, solar passive ear-corn drying, and heated-air earcorn drying and to perform the cost analysis of these three techniques, and analyzed the comparative performance of these techniques based on field data. Solar passive dryer was constructed in Okara and Pind Dadan Khan to dry ear-corn; the test results indicated that dryer was found capable to dry 0.5 tons of ear-corn from 26.1 to 18.9% moisture content in October in four days and from 26.4% to 20.1% in June in two days. During sun drying 25.9% moisture content was decreased to 19.1% in October and 25.6% to 18.4% in June. A heated-air dryer developed at Agricultural and Biological Engineering Institute, National Agricultural Research Centre, Islamabad was also evaluated. The tests results showed that dryer had capacity to dry 4 tons ear-corn from 26.5 to 20.4% moisture content in 9 hours using heated air. Finally, the cost analyses of these three ear-corn drying techniques were also performed.