Experiments were conducted to study the mechanical detaching of garlic. A 3 horsepower electric motor driven detacher was fabricated at the AEnRI workshop. The machine is scaled down copy from a larger American made garlic detacher. The garlic bulbes fall from the machine hopper on the top of a horizontal conveyor belt moving below the de­taching drum, which rotates in opposit direction. The detaching action occured when the lower surface of the bulb moves in a direction and at a speed different from the upper side of the bulb by the action of the fric­tional forces. The effect of garlic bulb size as well as coefficient of fric­tion of garlic material and belt material was studied. The effect of drum speed (Vd), belt speed (Vb) and drum to belt clearance on the perfor­mance of the detacher was also studied. Detaching increased at the low­er Vd/Vb. Damage increased with the increase of Vd/Vb and at the smaller clearance between the belt and the drum. Final results showed that maximum detaching performance gave 43% single cloves, 37% double attached cloves and about 5.5% multiple attached cloves were achieved at Vd/Vb ratio of 0.37.