Development and performance evaluation of low cost fruits and vegetable grader

Abstract

Fruits and vegetables contribute significant share to countrywide and worldwide trade. Grading is one of the important unit operations in post-harvest handling of fruits and vegetables to categorize into different grades as defined by their physical and appearance criteria to obtain the maximum worth in the market. Perceiving the need for a novel and cost effective grader suitable for multiple commodities, a mechanical grader was developed and evaluated in present study. The developed grader was consisting of feed hopper, grader unit and collecting chutes. The grader was evaluated for various parameters viz., grading capacity, grading effectiveness and bulb damage. Tomato, Lemon and Guava were selected commodities for performance evaluation of the grader. The feed rate for all the products was maintained at 10 kg. The results shown that grading capacity for tomato, lemon and guava was 421 kg/h, 509 kg/h and 468 kg/h, respectively. Grading effectiveness was found maximum for tomato with 0.322 whereas it was 0.303 and 0.292 for lemon and guava, respectively. Bulb damage was less for lemon with a value of 0.70% while guava and tomato revealed bulb damage of 0.75% and 1.70%, respectively. The overall performance of the grader was satisfactory and it has good scope to enter into grading market for feasibility studies.