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Scarification and Degermination of Sorghum for Grits Production: Effects of Hybrid and Conditioning¹

¹Contribution No. 00-176-J from the Kansas Agricultural Experimental Station. ²Graduate research assistant, Department of Grain Science and Industry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506. ³Associate Professor, Department of Grain Science and Industry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506. ⁴Corresponding author. Phone: 785-532-4064. Fax: 785-532-7010. E-mail: raf@wheat.ksu.edu ⁵Professor, Department of Statistics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506.

Three sorghum hybrids were tempered and decorticated with an abrasive-type mill (scarifier) to produce low-ash and low-fat grits. The effects of tempering time and temperature were investigated, and the optimum tempering conditions for obtaining low-ash and low-fat grits were found for each sorghum hybrid. The conditions were 3 min at 30°C for bronze sorghum with heteroyellow endosperm, 40 min at 40°C for white sorghum with white endosperm, and 10 min at 20°C for red sorghum with white endosperm. The grits yields were low using the scarifier, hence, another abrasive-type mill was investigated for improving grits yields. A modified experimental corn decorticator-degerminator was used to dry-mill the three sorghum hybrids tempered to the optimum conditions found with the scarifier. The yields were 45.3% grits with 0.23% ash and 0.18% fat for the bronze/heteroyellow hybrid, 49.1% grits with 0.22% ash and 0.36% fat for white/white hybrid, and 44.2% grits with 0.20% ash and 0.22% fat for red/white hybrid. This study showed that grits yields were higher and ash and fat contents were lower when sorghum was processed with the decorticator-degerminator than with the scarifier under the same optimum conditioning.