DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF MECHANICAL PICKING HEAD FOR PEACH FRUITS HARVESTING

Abstract

The traditional harvesting peach fruits methods using hand hook and hand picking consider the most important problems still facing the peach producers in Egypt due to lower picker productivity and fruit quality. Therefore, two mechanical harvesting prototypes (electrical picking hook and electrical picking holder) were designed and fabricated for picking peach fruits as a simple low cost picking heads that assures having fair fruit quality with minimal damage and evaluating the effect of using it on the picker performance and productivity. The evaluation experiments were carried out during picking peach fruit seasons of 2007 and 2008 at some private peach farms in EL-Arish, North Sinai Governorate and old Meet-Ghamr, Dakhalia Governorate, Egypt. The obtained results allow us to drawn the following conclusions The picker productivity using electrical picking hook was increased by about (91.32, 146.92, and 46.30% and saving the total harvesting cost by about 47.73, 62.29 and 41.38% (as an average percentages for picking Meet Ghamr and Early Grand peach fruits varieties) comparing with electrical picking holder, manual picking hook and hand picking method, respectively. Using electrical picking hook gave the lowest percentage of bruised (3.0%), damaged fruit percentage (1.0%), and the highest value of good quality fruit percentage 96.0% (extra fancy–Grade I) comparing with other mechanical and traditional harvesting methods under study. The authors recommended to locally fabricate and use the electrical picking hook for harvesting peach fruits to increase labor picking productivity and reduce picking cost. In addition to increase the rate of good quality for local and exporting fresh markets, consequently, increasing the net benefit and national income. However, the electrical picking holder still needs some modifications to increase its performance efficiency.