Assessment of mango harvester for drudgery reduction over conventional methods

Abstract

In the harvesting of different fruits two major methods were followed by Indian farmers that are manual plucking and tree shaking. The tree branches are shaken to speed up the harvesting, which results in post harvest losses due to the physical damage, stem end rot and sap bleeding in mangoes due to absence of pedicel. To overcome these local harvesting methods and to reduce the drudgery of the farmers Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour has developed five types of mango harvesters (Model A,B,C,D and E). Three harvesters (Model C,D and E) are manual operated and works on the principal of pulling/cutting, while one is power operated (Model B) which works on battery for power, and uses cutting principal, and another one (Model A) is manual-cum-power (battery) operated which uses cutting as well as pulling action for detachment of mangoes from tree branches. The local harvester harvests fruit without pedicel, whereas developed models, an improvement on the conventional harvester harvests the fruit with pedicel. The fruit harvest per hour was more in Model C (manual operated) that was (80-88 fruits/ 10 min) when compared to local harvester, manual plucking and tree shaking The number of labours per day for fruit harvesting was more in manual plucking and tree shaking, where as in developed harvester (Model C) took less labours that is (18 labours/day). Among harvesters Model C has higher efficiency over local model in labour and time saving. Model C has advantages over all the models A, B, D and E in terms of number of mangoes plucked, damages, and labour requirement.