Development of Rotary Sieve for Preparation of Casing Soil Required in Mushroom Cultivation.

Preparation of casing material is an important and crucial step in button mushroom cultivation. Decomposed farmyard manure (FYM) is one of the major ingredients used in the casing mixture and it needs to be sieved for the separation of undesirable impurities. The conventional practice of sieving raw FYM is time consuming, crude and causes drudgery to the human labors. The study aims to develop a rotary sieve to be used for sieving of raw FYM before its use in casing mixture. While fabrication, sieve performance was evaluated by carrying out 15 experimental trials formulated using the Box-Behnken design of response surface methodology. Maximum sieve effectiveness (0.952) and throughput capacity (61crates/h) were estimated at the rotational speed of 33.2 rpm, sieve inclination of 9.8% and 0.49 inch sieve aperture. Labor, time and human drudgery were seen to be significantly reduced by using rotary sieve in casing material preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]