Development of Ergo-friendly harvesting system for Guava (psidium guajava) fruit
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Date
2010
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MPUAT, Udaipur
Abstract
Harvesting of fruits is an important operation in agricultural practice. Very little attention has been paid in ergonomically designing of agricultural tools for harvesting operation specially for fruits. A study was conducted to survey the existing traditional harvesting methods utilized for guava fruits in Udaipur region and to identify associated physical and physiological problems occured in guava fruit harvest. Based on the identified problems and to reduce physical working stress of farm workers in harvesting opeartion an Ergo-Friendly harvesting system was developed, which comprised of three components viz, harvesting tool, harvesting platform and collection bag.
Three methods viz. traditional, secateur and improved method were ergonomically evaluated with 12 male agricultural workers. Ergonomic evaluation was made on the basis of ODR, BPDS, heart rate and energy expenditure rate. The ODR value ranged from 4.7 to 6.4 and 3.1 to 4.3 and BPDS value ranged from 45 to 57 and 31 to 43 in traditional and improved method of guava fruits harvesting respectively. The mean working heart rate (HR) ranged from 98.70 to 102.02 beats/min and 89.49 to 91.39 beats/min and mean Δ HR value ranges from 21.00 to 26.35 beats/min and 14.27 to 18.69 beats/min for traditional and improved Guava harvesting methods, respectively. The mean energy expenditure rate was higher in traditional method (3.39 kcal/min) as compared to improved method (1.61 kcal/min). The improved harvesting technique resulted less fatigue to perform fruits harvesting operations than traditional harvesting method. The more output in terms of harvested fruits obtained in traditional method than improved method but considerable damage to fruits observed in traditional method as compare to improved method.
Overall discomfort rate (ODR) and mean working heart rate (HR) were used to classify the level as discomfort and type of work amongst the workers. Harvesting with traditional method was observed to be moderately heavy mode of work with “fairly discomfort” while the harvesting with improved method could be classified under the category of moderate discomfort with light mode work.
Description
Development of Ergo-friendly harvesting system for Guava (psidium guajava) fruit
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Citation
Wade and Tiwari, 2010