DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF MECHANICAL PICKING HEADS FOR CITRUS FRUITS HARVESTING | ||||
| Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Research | ||||
| Article 21, Volume 89, Issue 4, December 2011, Page 1545-1562 PDF (913.22 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejar.2011.179529 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Authors | ||||
| ATEF S. HAMAM; MAHMOUD E. EL-IRAQI; YOUSSEF F. SHARIBIM; TAHER R. AWAIS | ||||
| Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt. | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| In this study, two prototypes of rotary cone harvesting and harvesting electrical scissors heads were designed, fabricated and evaluated to reduce the required number of manual picker and maximize its productivity that reduce harvesting costs. The rotary harvesting head was evaluated under four types of rotary cone and four cone rotational speeds of 300, 450, 600, and 750 rpm for harvesting of Washingtonia and Valencia orange fruits compared with traditional harvesting method. While, the electrical scissors harvesting head was evaluated using five different skill labors for harvesting of Washingtonia, Valencia, Mandarin and Lemon citrus fruits compared with traditional harvesting method. The important obtained results could be concluded as follows: Using harvesting rotary cone type IV (metal cone provided with rubber inner surface and without upper edge) at cone rotary speed of 600 rpm increased the labor productivity from 0.111 and 0.084 ton/h using traditional harvesting method to 0.208 and 0.154 ton/h for harvesting Washingtonia and Valencia orange fruits, respectively and maintain the optimum fruit quality by increasing the percentage of fruit with calyx-Grade I (65.96-73.01%) and decreasing the percentage of damaged fruit Grade IV (1.20-4.31%). Using electrical scissors head increased the labor productivity from 0.111, 0.084, 0.053 and 0.013 ton/h using traditional harvesting method to 0.153, 0.129, 0.084 and 0.016 ton/h with maintain the higher percentages of grade I (< 0.5 cm twig length) of 43.35, 51.15, 51.78 and 53.00% and the lower damaged fruit percentages of 6.71, 4.55, 3.55 and 1.97 % for harvesting Washingtonia and Valencia orange, Mandarin and Lemon fruits, respectively. Using mechanical citrus harvesting methods saving the harvesting cost by about 25.85 - 59.58% for harvesting Washingtonia orange fruits and by about 53.00 - 67.99% for harvesting Valencia orange fruits compared with traditional citrus harvesting methods. The authors recommended to locally fabricate and use the rotary cone and electrical scissors harvesting heads to increase the labor productivity and the rate of fresh market exporting, reduce the harvesting cost and consequently increase the farmer benefit and national income. In addition to decrease the hazards of platforms and lifting methods using traditional methods during harvesting citrus fruits. | ||||
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