CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION:
1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND:
After harvest, agro raw materials are normally handled, transported, dried, stored and further processed into food, feed and fiber.
In some basic post harvest activities, separation processes such as sorting, grading and cleaning are involved.
In mechanized operations, these post harvest processes are supposed to be carried out with machines and equipment. The engineering design and efficient operation of the post harvest processing machines and equipment require adequate knowledge of engineering properties of the bio-materials. Knowledge of engineering properties such as physical and mechanical properties constitute important and essential engineering data in the design of machines; storage structures; processes and controls as well as in the analysis and determination of the efficiency of machines, development of new consumer products of plants and animal origin and in the evaluation of the quality of food products. (Mohsenin,1986; Oluka, 1991; Oluka and Nwuba, 2001).
1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM DEFINITION:
             NERICA, also known as New Rice for Africa (NERICA) is a hybrid of the local African rice variety with high disease resistant traits and the high yielding variety of Asia.  The rice is quite new to Africa and is currently being adopted and tried across the continent.
As a new product, there are on-going research studies on NERICA rice varieties. Studies on the engineering properties of the new rice variety are one of them.