Vol. 8, Issue 4, Part G (2024)

Abstract: Onion plays a crucial role in global food system and the top onion-producing countries in the world are China, India, United States of America and Turkey. These four countries account for more than 50% of the world's total onion production. India is one of the largest onion-producing countries in the world and onions are an important crop for the economy of the country. The physical and engineering characteristics of onion seed contains crucial data necessary for designing its metering mechanism, seed box configuration and other machinery parameters. The mean of major, intermediate and minor dimensions of the selected onion seeds were found as 2.93 mm, 2.16 mm and 1.57 mm with average geometric mean diameter as 2.15 mm. Similarly, average value of sphericity of the onion seeds, weight of 1000 onion seeds, bulk density and true density was observed as 0.73, 3.75 g, 450.81 kg/m³ and 847.05 kg/m³, respectively. The porosity and moisture content was found 47.11% and 10.47%. The average value of some mechanical properties such as angle of repose as 22.5^o and coefficient of static friction for mild steel sheet, aluminum and galvanized iron sheet was observed as 0.165, 0.182 and 0.198, respectively.