Medicinal and Aromatic Crops: Harvesting, Drying, and Processing

Make sure your crops are market-ready with the aid of harvest and post-harvest mechanization

Medicinal and Aromatic Crops presents harvest and post-harvest mechanization methods for the profitable production of market-ready medicinal crops. This practical handbook includes photos, detailed figures, and schematic drawings of machines that will help bring existing design ideas to life and inspire new ones for use in harvesting and primary processing. The book also includes general information on medicinal and aromatic plants, current production trends, and how-to instructions for improving the production process.

Even though the use of mechanization contributes not only to a marked increase in production, but also enables uniform quality and a decrease in drudgery for everyone involved, there's a distinct lack of material available of the subject. Medicinal and Aromatic Crops fills in the gap, providing a thorough, comprehensive look at every aspect of the mechanism of growing, harvesting, and processing, including production steps and procedures, safety and quality, plant drying, the use of renewable energy sources, dry processing, extraction, industrial usage, financial analysis, and software usage.

Medicinal and Aromatic Crops examines:

• environmental concerns
  
• manual and semi-mechanized harvesting
  
• transport
  
• the use of solar energy and solid biomass energy
  
• pre- and post-drying processes
  
• plant parts removal
  
• cutting, crushing, and milling
  
• post-drying separation and classification
  
• water and steam distillation
  
• and much more!

Medicinal and Aromatic Crops is an invaluable guide to harvest and post-harvest mechanization for anyone involved in plant production and for agriculture educators and students.