Sesame — Processing

Metadata research draftEvidence limits

⚠️ Status: metadata draft. Every DOI below is a candidate metadata record from the survey research/sesame-seeds/report.md — title and identifier only, not screened evidence. The survey is explicit: “Manual/small-press throughput, filtered-oil recovery, settling/filtration, residual cake handling, and labor remain Unknown” (§3.9). No extraction method, temperature, or yield is recommended, and no food-safety practice is prescribed. Substantive values remain Unknown until S-#### source notes exist (docs/methodology/evidence.md).

Two outputs — clean seed and extracted oil

• Sesame must be treated as two linked but separate outputs: clean seed and extracted oil (survey §2). Processing decisions (roast or not, press or not) fork the product; their yields, quality endpoints, and economics never merge. See yield.md and economics.md. Evidence: Known (project framing).
• Within clean seed, food seed and planting seed are different lots with different requirements — processing for food must not silently consume the seed reserved for sowing (see storage.md).

Chain

harvest → dry → thresh → clean → (roast) → press → oil + cake — with each arrow a loss and labor point that is Evidence: Unknown at household scale. Each arrow is also a handling boundary where the survey’s food-safety cautions apply (§5) — noted, not prescribed. Harvest-side stages live in harvesting.md; drying endpoint in storage.md.

Threshing and cleaning candidates (mechanized)

• Sesame-thresher development/evaluation (10.31018/jans.v13isi.2824, 2021); adaptation of threshing equipment (10.1088/1755-1315/1290/1/012015, 2024); adaptation of grain-cleaning equipment (10.3390/agriengineering7060179, 2025) — survey §3.7.
• What they establish: mechanized threshing/cleaning engineering exists as a studied topic. What they do not: any hand method, screen choice, winnowing practice, loss level, or labor figure for a household. The survey states these machinery candidates “do not answer household cutting, bundling, hand threshing, winnowing, labor, and loss questions” (§3.7).

Roasting and oil-extraction candidates (industrial)

• Roasting effects on oil composition/quality (10.1002/jsfa.2740500413, 1990) — a composition/quality study candidate; no roast condition is recommended for food or flavor here.
• Expeller wormshaft speed and moisture vs oil/cake quality (10.1002/ts.115, 2003); low-temperature screw-press extraction optimization (10.1007/s11947-017-1885-4, 2017; 50 citation edges); cold pressing and oil/cake quality (10.3390/foods10092108, 2021) — survey §3.9. All machine/process records at title level; settings and outcomes unread.
• Processing/storage and sesame-oil stability (10.1007/s11746-997-0159-0, 1997) — bridges to storage.md; no stability claim is made.

Manual and small-press questions (the real gap)

• Manual or small mechanical press at household scale — equipment choice, throughput, filtered-oil recovery per kg of clean seed, settling/filtration, residual cake handling, and labor: Evidence: Unknown (survey §3.9). Open question 13 marks oil recovery per kg as “Needs experiment.”
• Hand threshing and winnowing of small lots; screens and household tools for cleaning tiny seed without unacceptable loss or contamination (open question 12) — Evidence: Unknown.

Food-safety boundary (not prescriptions)

• The survey’s food-use boundary (§5) applies to processing: sesame seed and oil carry allergen, microbial (e.g., Salmonella), and mycotoxin concerns, and no home-processing safety threshold is asserted anywhere in this dossier. Authoritative jurisdiction-specific guidance is required before any food-handling practice is adopted. See storage.md for the boundary candidates; this page prescribes nothing.

Coverage limits

• The survey names household manual processing among its weakest areas (§2, §7): cutting/bundling, hand threshing, winnowing, cleaning losses, labor-hours per kilogram, and small-press settling/filtration economics lack accepted human-scale evidence. The selected oil-extraction records use machine/process-science framing.
• More than 49% of canonical records lack abstracts (survey §7), so even the industrial candidates’ scope is only partially visible at metadata level.

Screening priority

• The cold-press oil/cake quality record (10.3390/foods10092108, 2021) and the low-temperature screw-press optimization record (10.1007/s11947-017-1885-4, 2017; 50 citation edges) are the closest to small-press questions on title — but both concern machine pressing, and neither answers throughput, filtration, or labor at household scale.
• The cleaning-equipment adaptation record (10.3390/agriengineering7060179, 2025) is the newest candidate and worth screening for any small-lot cleaning insight; its loss figures would still not transfer without scale context.

Small-scale relevance

• Household transfer, screening, winnowing, and cleaning losses are Evidence: Unknown; the selected machinery candidates do not establish those values. E3 is the proposed manual benchmark for time, mass, and losses, followed by the press-recovery question once clean-seed recovery is known.

Unknowns and experiments

• Household threshing/winnowing/cleaning methods, losses, and labor per kg — Evidence: Unknown; Evidence: Needs experiment (E3, open questions 10 and 12).
• Small-press oil recovery per kg of clean seed, with cake output and labor — Evidence: Unknown; Evidence: Needs experiment (open question 13).
• Roasting/pressing choices vs edible quality at home — Evidence: Unknown; safety guidance — Evidence: Unknown, external and jurisdiction-specific (survey §5).

Related pages

• harvesting.md — maturity, dehiscence vs loss, and mechanized threshing candidates.
• storage.md — drying endpoint, stored pests, and the food-safety boundary.
• yield.md — seed vs extracted-oil yield separation.
• economics.md — press investment and labor economics remain open.
• open-questions.md — questions 10, 12, 13; experiment E3.

Provenance

• Survey: research/sesame-seeds/report.md — metadata-level; candidates pending human screening (survey §8).
• Evidence rules: docs/methodology/evidence.md. No DOI above is a registered source (S-####); none supports a method, temperature, or yield recommendation.