Design, Development, and Performance Evaluation of a Mechanical Device for Harvesting Pineapple

Pineapple Ananas comosus in family Bromeliaceaeis a large, succulent, and tasty fruit with immense health benefits. Among all the cultivation activities of pineapple, harvesting is the most difficult, time consuming, and energy intensive process due to the higher plant density and spiny leaves of pineapple plants. Although, mechanization helps to increase the efficiency and post harvest quality, very little attention has been drawn to the mechanization of the harvesting process. Therefore, the aim of this study was to introduce an efficient mechanical method for harvesting to overcome the practical problems associated with manual harvesting. The major concept of this is to harvest more fruits from one place by minimizing movement in the cultivation. The long handle, fruit picker, stalk holder, cutter, and operating levers are the major components of this device. The remotely operated cutter and fruit gripper are fixed in one end of the 2m long handle and operating levers are attached to other end so that all the fruits within a nearly 2m radius circular area can be harvested from a one place. The performance of the mechanical harvester was evaluated compared to the manual method at a pineapple field in Kurunegala district of Sri Lanka. The Actual harvesting capacity of the device was 385 fruits h 1with 84 efficiency while the manual method recorded it as 210 fruitsh 1 with 64 efficiency when it is operated by males in double row cultivation systems. Results clearly showed that the mechanical method saves more time considerably than the manual method. P. D. Kahandage | S. W. Hettiarachchi | G. V. T. V. Weerasooriya | E. J. Kosgollegedara | S. D. S. Piyathissa "Design, Development, and Performance Evaluation of a Mechanical Device for Harvesting Pineapple" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-4 , June 2021, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.compapers/ijtsrd42548.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.comengineering/agricultural-engineering/42548/design-development-and-performance-evaluation-of-a-mechanical-device-for-harvesting-pineapple/p-d-kahandage