Paper Title
Design and Optimization of Solar Crop Dryer based on DoE – Response Surface Approach

Abstract
To maintain the quality of the agricultural products post-harvesting process is considered as the most significant. In this process the drying treatment has the direct impact on preservation and safe storage of the crops. Since Oscimum sanctum commonly known as Tulsi has different ayurvedic and medicinal applications. Thus, a study on drying treatment of tulsi leaves were considered by applying the concept Design and Analysis of Experiments. The different experiments were carried out with temperature and air velocity as the major factors which is suspected to have an influence on the moisture content. The experiment was conducted with two techniques, one with using electric blower and room heater for drying the tulsi leaves and the other with using solar energy respectively. Finally, ANOVA was performed and the experiment with highest moisture reduction was considered as the optimum which can be carried out for future usage. Keywords - DOE, ANOVA, MINITAB, DS18B20, ARDUINO, ELECTRIC BLOWER, SOALR COLLECTOR