ISHS Acta Horticulturae 710: International Symposium on Greenhouses, Environmental Controls and In-house Mechanization for Crop Production in the Tropics and Sub-Tropics
MANUALLY OPERATED TOMATO HARVESTING TOOL FOR GREENHOUSE |
| Author: | D.V.K. Samuel |
| Keywords: | tomato harvesting tool, picking device |
| Abstract:
Traditionally, tomatoes are harvested with bare hands by the farmers in the most parts of the world. This not only involves drudgery but also results in low harvesting rates both for the crop grown in open fields and in the greenhouses. To overcome this problem, a manually operated tomato harvesting tool made from 5.0 mm diameter steel rod, has been developed. The hand held gadget has twelve picking fingers spaced 10.0 mm apart. The tomatoes get detached from the plant with a slight pulling action of the gadget. Harvested tomatoes fall and get collected in the nylon wire net attached to the gadget. Harvesting trials were conducted in the departmental Multi Span Saw Tooth Greenhouse facility on three tomato varieties namely, Navin, Rakshita and Avinash-2. The results were compared with manual (with bare hands) harvesting employing farm labourers. The analysis of the data revealed that the manual (bare hands) harvesting rate for three varieties ranged from 22.0 kg/hr to 30.0 kg/hr, whereas harvesting with the developed gadget resulted in harvesting rates ranging from 54.0 kg/hr to 59.0 kg/hr. This shows that harvesting rate was close to one kg of tomatoes per minute which is 2-2.7 times more than tomato harvested manually with bare hands. The gadget is light in weight and simple in construction and costs less than Rs. 100/- (US $2.00) to fabricate. | |
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