Beta
179529

DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF MECHANICAL PICKING HEADS FOR CITRUS FRUITS HARVESTING

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

-

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.

DOI

10.21608/ejar.2011.179529

Authors

First Name

ATEF S.

Last Name

HAMAM

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

MAHMOUD E.

Last Name

EL-IRAQI

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

YOUSSEF F.

Last Name

SHARIBIM

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

TAHER R.

Last Name

AWAIS

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

89

Article Issue

4

Related Issue

25568

Issue Date

2011-12-01

Receive Date

2011-04-12

Publish Date

2011-12-01

Page Start

1,545

Page End

1,562

Print ISSN

1110-6336

Online ISSN

2812-4936

Link

https://ejar.journals.ekb.eg/article_179529.html

Detail API

https://ejar.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=179529

Order

21

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,041

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Research

Publication Link

https://ejar.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF MECHANICAL PICKING HEADS FOR CITRUS FRUITS HARVESTING

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023