Effect of Packaging on the Storage Quality of Soybean Seeds

Abstract

The study on quality of soybean seeds cv. Chiang Mai 60 aimed to compare different packaging materials to the storage quality of soybean seeds. The experimental design used a completely randomized design.  Before the experiment, seeds were culled to get rid of low-quality seeds and impurities. The initial moisture content of all seeds was reduced below 10% before conducting all experiments. Soybean seeds were packed in different packages of 10 kg per bag.  The experiment was divided into 4 treatments: 1) woven plastic sack polypropylene (PP), 2) woven plastic sacks PP with polyethylene bag (PE), 3) woven plastic sacks PP with linear low-density polyethylene bag (LLDPE), and 4) woven plastic sacks PP coated with laminate. Seeds in 4 types of bags were stored at a temperature 20 °C (30±5% RH). Soybean seeds were sampled randomly for quality analysis at 30-day intervals over 8 months of storage and each treatment had 3 replications. It was found that the plastic sack PP coated with laminate, could delay better the development of abnormal soybean seeds, including the color changes (L*, C*, and hº) from yellow to brown than other types of packaging. Seeds in woven plastic sack PP had the highest weight loss, which was related to a decrease in the moisture content of seeds. However, type of packaging materials did not affect the change in protein content of seeds and levels of oxygen (O₂) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in packages throughout the storage for 8 months