Project Description

Seed moisture content will come to equilibrium with the relative humidity (RH) of their environment. This is the reason why when seeds are dried and stored out in the open, they will reabsorb water until they reach equilibrium. Unfortunately, this equilibrium moisture content in most environments is too high for proper seed storage.

For example, rice seeds reach equilibrium at 13.3% seed moisture content when stored in an environment of 30˚C and an RH of 80%, not uncommon in many Asian countries. Under these conditions, high quality seeds (99% viability) will drop to 25% viability after only 120 days. (Calculated at the KEW Seed Information Database website, using the Ellis & Roberts equation).

Therefore, seeds should be dried and stored in containers that are hermetically closed and that thus can maintain a low RH. Sealed and vacuum-sealed bags are of course ideal, but are often not available. Therefore we designed a system that not only keeps the seeds in a sealed condition, but also can alert the owner when something is going wrong. These DrumDry vessels can be used to dry and store seeds under these almost optimal conditions, and display RH values for monitoring of seed moisture content inside the drum.