DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-PROPELLED LEAFY CROP HARVESTER 3755
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Date
0009
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Publisher
jau junagadh
Abstract
India ranks second in fruits and vegetable production in the world, after China.
It produced 191.77 million tonnes of vegetables under area cultivation of 10.35 million
hectare as per National Horticulture Database (Second Advance Estimates) published
by National Horticulture Board, during 2019-20. The average productivity of most
horticultural crops in India is low due to the use of traditional tools and methods for
cultivation.
In Saurashtra region, most of farmers conduct harvesting of leafy crops like
coriander, fenugreek, Indian spinach etc. manually in the early morning. It involves a
variety of traditional postures not ergonomically suitable for harvesting and prolonged
exposure to these traditional methods can result in drudgery and occupational diseases.
Due to perishable nature of leafy crops, harvesting requires manpower and delayed
harvesting affects the quality of the product. The manual harvesting in one hectare area
of leafy crops normally needs 160- 200 man- hours and labour cost is increasing over
the years.
To solve the harvesting problem for leafy crops a self-propelled leafy crop
harvester was designed developed and its performance was evaluated. The developed
harvester mainly consists of main frame, cutting unit, conveyor unit, storage unit,
steering unit and transportation unit with the cutting width of 0.76 m and total weight
of 213 kg was designed, developed and tested for three different crops namely,
coriander, fenugreek and Indian spinach at three crank speeds (S1 - 175-274 rpm, S2-
275-374 rpm and S3 -375-425 rpm).
The cutting efficiency was found 81.08 %, 73.41 % and 62.98 % for Indian
spinach, fenugreek and coriander respectively. The highest cutting efficiency was found
at highest crank speed. The crankshaft speed, S3 (375 - 425 rpm) was found to have the
highest effective field capacity. It was found 0.1099 ha/h, 0.1096 ha/h, and 0.1041 ha/h
for Indian Spinach, fenugreek and coriander respectively. The field efficiency was
found 79.04 % in Indian spinach crop as compared to 78.79 % for fenugreek and 74.86
% for coriander. The fuel consumption was found 0.96 l/h, 0.97 l/h and 0.96 l/h for
coriander, fenugreek, and Indian spinach respectively.
The heart rate, oxygen consumption and energy consumption rate were
increased with increase in crank speed. The highest values of energy consumption rate
4.41 kcal/min were found for Indian spinach at crank speed, S3. These values indicate
the harvesting operation comes under the category of moderately heavy work. The
subjective rating of subjects during the operation was found in range of 3.4 - 4.6 which
falls in category of light to moderate work.
The cost of harvesting by the developed harvester was compared with the
manual method and found ₹ 1990.38 /- and ₹ 7000/- per hectare respectively. The
saving in cost and time of harvesting by leafy crop harvester was found 71.57 % and
95.30 % per hectare with respect to manual method of harvesting. The benefit cost ratio
and payback period for self-propelled leafy crop harvester was found 3.05 and 2.62
years, respectively. The break-even point for the developed leafy crop harvesting
machine was found 122.9 h per year