Design, Fabrication and Evaluation of a Portable Harvesting Machine for Rosa Damascena
Subject Areas : Optimizing the use of fertilizers and poisons
Mohammad Younesi Alamooti
1
,
Omid Reza Roustapoor
2
1 - Associate professor of Farm Power and Machinery, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran.
2 - Associate Professor, Imam Khomeini Higher Education Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Alborz, Iran
Keywords: Fuel consumption, Mechanization harvesting, Harvesting period, Portable machine, Rosa damascene,
Abstract :
Rosa damascena is one of the significant Rosa flower in all over the world and one of the famous plant in horticulture history. Rosa flowers will harvest from the first of Ordibehesht to the end of Khordad before rising sun and in the cool air of morning. In the current research, a portable machine for flower harvesting designed and developed. This machine contains a cutter, suction pipe, fuel motor, frame, backpack and a cyclone separator. All components of the machine including the motor and the cyclone separator are assembled on frame and transported by workers. Flower cut exactly under the receptacle by a reciprocating cutter and sucked to the flexible pipe by the fuel motor and after that transferred to a cyclone separator. Finally, flower is collected in a canvas bag installed at the end of cyclone. Evaluation of the machine was done using completely randomized design with three treatments and three replications in the flower plain of Lizangan from Darab. The treatments were the revolution of motor shaft in three levels of 900, 1200 and 1500 rpm. The parameters including fuel consumption and harvesting period time in every treatment were measured. The control treatment was considered traditional flower harvesting by hand. Based on the evaluation results, increasing the rpm of motor was caused to increase fuel consumption and decrease the net harvesting period time. Also, harvesting time at maximum revolution of motor was decreased in comparison with hand harvesting.
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