Grade systems, specification parameters, contaminant limits and loading arithmetic for Indian pulses, oilseeds, spices and castor oil. Written for the person who has to sign the purchase order.
Count is kernels per ounce, so 40/50 is a bigger peanut than 60/70. Java, Bold and TJ are plant types rather than quality tiers, and confusing the two is how buyers end up paying a size premium for the wrong kernel.
Blanching removes the skin, and everything else about the product changes with it. Skin removal percentage, split tolerance and free fatty acid become the parameters that decide whether the lot performs, and count matters less than buyers expect.
The three grades differ in one thing, how much processing the oil has had after leaving the seed, and everything else follows from that. Here is what each grade's certificate of analysis should say and which parameters actually predict performance.
ASTA colour value measures extractable red pigment and nothing else. It does not measure heat, it is not a visual grade, and it falls steadily in storage, which is why a colour figure without a test date is close to useless.
Guntur Sannam, Byadgi, Teja and Kashmiri are not grades of the same thing. They are different varieties with different colour, heat, skin thickness and harvest windows, and choosing wrong costs more than any price negotiation will recover.
Toor dal is a milled product, so the mill decides most of what you receive. Polish type is the line buyers most often leave blank and most often regret, because oil polish is an added ingredient with a declaration attached.
Whole, chilka, dhuli and gota are four different products from the same pulse. And if your customer makes idli batter or papad, the parameter that decides whether they are satisfied is functional performance, which appears on no standard specification.
Whole green gram is graded on a sieve, in millimetres, and if it is going to be sprouted then germination percentage is the only specification that matters. It is also the one most contracts leave out.
Chana dal comes from desi chickpea, not kabuli, and the difference decides yield, colour and price. If you are also buying besan, the milling economics of the two products are linked in a way most contracts ignore.
Rajma is graded on seed count and colour, but the two specifications that decide whether a shipment works are hydration behaviour for canners and a cooking instruction that exists for a genuine toxicological reason.
Green peas lose colour in storage and light, which turns a cosmetic issue into a grading defect. And a large share of the yellow pea moving through India was grown somewhere else, which is a question worth asking before you sign.
Cowpea is bought on eye definition and seed coat integrity, moth bean on sprouting vigour and flour behaviour. Both are commodity-priced and both have narrow quality windows that a general pulse specification misses completely.
The rule that catches most exporters is that a substance with no listed limit does not have an unlimited limit. Where nothing is set, a default of 0.01 mg/kg applies, and that is stricter than almost every specific MRL in the regulation.
Ethylene oxide is not authorised as a plant protection product in the European Union, and the residue that gets found is usually its breakdown product rather than the gas itself. That is why a lot treated years ago can still fail, and why steam is the only durable route.
An Indian exporter cannot be the FSVP importer, but almost everything the FSVP importer needs comes from the exporter. Getting that division of labour right is what keeps a container from sitting at a US port.
Organic certification controls the process, not the residue. Understanding that one distinction explains why a certified lot can still test positive, why fumigation can destroy the certification, and where group certification actually fails.
Singapore quality and Europe quality are purity grades, not destinations. Here is what the 99/1 and 99.5/0.5 numbers mean, which parameters decide whether a lot performs, and the EU contaminant limits that apply to cumin.
A phytosanitary certificate is about pests, not food safety, and its value sits almost entirely in the additional declaration. Wrong wording on that one line will hold a container even when the treatment was done correctly.
An official aflatoxin sampling plan takes 100 increments and a 20 kg aggregate sample from a single lot. Most commercial pre-shipment sampling takes a fraction of that, which is why two honest laboratories can report two different results on the same container.
The HS is harmonised only to six digits, so your Indian code and your buyer's code are different numbers for the same goods. And grinding a spice or milling a pulse into flour moves it to a different heading, which changes the duty.
A sealed liner does not dry a lot, it locks in whatever moisture was there at packing. Get that sequence backwards and the packaging that was supposed to protect the consignment is what ruins it.
The EU sets limits per product category and per intended use, the FDA works on action levels, and India has its own regime. The limits are only half the story. The sampling rules are the other half.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 article by article: what Annex I and Annex II each require, the two clocks on the official certificate, and the paperwork failures that hold containers at border control posts.
Count is seeds per ounce, so a lower number is a bigger chickpea. Convert count to seed weight, match size to end use, and stop paying a size premium your process destroys.
Suta numbers are not backed by any published standard, which is why two suppliers can both honestly quote you 5 suta. Here is how to pin a grade down, and why makhana breaks your usual freight arithmetic.
What 99.5, 99.95 and 99.98 purity are counting, why hulling method changes the product, and the two compliance issues that stop Indian sesame at the European border.
FSG means First Special Grade. Here is how the Indian castor oil grades relate to each other, what every line on the specification is telling you, and why hydroxyl value matters far more than colour.
Every container has a break-even density that decides whether you fill on weight or on volume. Work it out once and you can plan any commodity, spot a wrongly quoted box, and stop paying for air.
Two separate lists: registrations you obtain once, and documents you generate per shipment. Plus the three certificates buyers confuse, the AD code trap, and why letters of credit fail on paperwork rather than product.