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This paper presents the indicators of quality of the grain obtained by harvesting winter wheat with conventional and rotary combine harvesters. It was identified that rotary combines substantially decrease both shattering and micro-damage to grain. The results of the research indicate that agribusiness enterprises should primarily use rotary combines to harvest seed crops. This, in turn, will allow to raise the qualitative characteristics of the seed grain, reduce the seeding rate and increase the crop yield. During the post-harvesting handling of grain heaps that arrive at the grain cleaning assemblies working according to the fractional flow technology using the universal high-performance machine, it is necessary to separate the forage fraction of grain with seeds less than 2.6 mm. This will allow to remove the air-screen cleaner machine for the secondary cleaning as well as the indented cylinder unit while removing the need for two norias for transporting grain towards them and moving it with the auger in the indented cylinder unit. Coarse impurities and unthreshed grain will be separated by a seed blower. This way, broad use of rotary combine harvesters to harvest cereal crops will allow not only to reduce shattering and micro-damage to seed grain during harvesting but also to simplify the seedcleaning plant, which in turn will lead to reduced costs of postharvest handling of market grain and seeds.

Over recent years the quality of crop seeds in our country leaves much to be desired. To have seeds that meet the requirements of all-Union State Standard, it is necessary to reduce the level of grain injury in the process of grain crop production. When harvesting crop seeds, a rotary combine harvester thresher should be used. They allow getting a better bunker heap of chaff and grain than their drum alternative. It is acknowledged that combine harvester threshers with the rotary threshing-separating device breaks grains 2,20-13,41 times less. While doing that, the amount of whole grains increases by 2.53-4.11%. Laboratory germination of seeds selected from the grain heap by means of rotary combine harvester threshers is 1.7-4.0% higher than when harvesting with machines equipped with drum threshing and separating devices. Within the post harvesting procedures, the sequenced-flow method should be applied to the grain processing. The method eliminates the temporary storage of grain crop in asphalted yards. It is necessary to separate chaff from grain immediately after it is transported to the elevator. For winter wheat seeds, the recommended thousand grain weight should be 40-50 g. Such results can be reached if the air-flow velocity of the seed cleaning machines is at least 8 mps at the level of the second aspirating channel, while sorting sieve plates of the sieve boot have the 2.6 mm through at least. Following these recommendations will significantly reduce the injury of grain during harvesting and post-harvest processing, which will affect the quality of both commercial and crop seeds.

The article presents the main results of studies on the influence of ozone concentration in the ozone-air mixture acting as a drying agent on the efficiency of the efficiency of grain dryers of various types. The positive effect of gas on shortening the duration of the process, increasing the speed of drying, reducing energy costs, increasing the productivity of grain dryers, has been revealed. An analysis based on the results of research conducted by leading scientists in this field and our own experiments made it possible to determine the feasibility of preliminary ozonization of a wet grain heap in metal buffer storage silos before feeding it to a grain dryer. In general, the advantages of using ozone during the drying of grain material before the traditional method are revealed. Agricultural producers are recommended to equip buffer silos for temporary storage of grain with an ozonization system, which, according to preliminary studies, will reduce the moisture content of the heap by one pass through the mine dryer by up to 8.3%. At the moment, the percentage of moisture removed for one drying cycle does not exceed 6%.

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