Stress-Cracks of Maize Dried in China

The quality of maize artificially dried in China was investigated and compared with sun-dry-ing. The stress cracks and stress-crack index were determined in drying maize from 25%-27%(w. b.) to 14%-15%. Four types of dryer were included in the survey: concurrent-/counter-flow, crossflow,mixed-flow,and steam-type.The sun-dried and steam-dried samples exhibit the fewest number of stresscracks and the lowest stress-crack index, the concurrent-/counter-flow and crossflow-dried maize havethe largest number of stress cracks and the highest stress-crack index.Mixed-flow dryer produced maizeof middle quality, not as good as sun-dried and steam-dried maize but considerably better than crossflow-dried and concurrent-/counter-flow dried maize.