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DIY Agriculture

Chia — Processing

Documentation outlineEvidence limits

⚠️ Status: outline only. Values Unknown until sources registered. This is expected to be the hardest human-scale step for chia and a focus of original experiments.

Chain

Section titled “Chain”

dry plants → thresh → winnow → screen → sort → clean seed

Threshing

Section titled “Threshing”
  • Separating seeds from dry inflorescences by hand. Unknown.
  • Methods: rubbing, beating, flailing; waterless (chia mucilage must be avoided when wet). Unknown.
  • Threshing losses and time per kg. Unknown.

Winnowing / separating chaff

Section titled “Winnowing / separating chaff”
  • Manual winnowing technique for tiny seeds. Unknown.
  • Use of sieves/screens (mesh sizes). Unknown.

Cleaning

Section titled “Cleaning”
  • Removing remaining chaff, plant matter, immature seeds. Unknown.
  • Does the gelatinous mucilage require dry-only handling? Unknown.

Sorting

Section titled “Sorting”
  • Grading seed by size/maturity. Unknown.

Equipment

Section titled “Equipment”
  • What must be bought vs improvised. Unknown.

Open questions / experiments

Section titled “Open questions / experiments”
  • Candidate: EX for “hand-thresh 1 kg dry chia: time and loss”. Record in open-questions.md. Needs experiment.

Data structure impact

Section titled “Data structure impact”

Processing informs harvest/processing complexity fields once evidence exists.