MODIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF HAND-HELD HARVESTERS FOR OLIVE FRUITS.

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to modify the real effectiveness of two imported hand-held harvester types namely; olive lancer with a vertical straight rotor head and olive comb harvester with a fruit collecting bag to increase the harvesting productivity and efficiency with high quality olive fruits; in addition to reduce the high cost and risks of manual harvesting method. Both harvester types were evaluated before and after modification compared with manual harvesting method of olive fruits in terms of labor productivity, harvesting efficiency, harvested fruit quality, energy requirements and harvesting cost. The obtained results may be summarized as follows: Modification and use of the olive lancer type harvester for harvesting Shimlaly and Tofahy olive fruit varieties gave a remarkable increment percentage in labor productivity by about 5-7 times higher with respect to manual harvesting method. Also, it can be save the harvesting manpower requirements by about 90-130% and reduce the total harvesting cost by about 185-245% comparing with manual harvesting cost. The use of hand-held modified olive comb harvester increased the labor productivity by about 1-2.5 times, saved the harvesting manpower requirements by about 190-260% and saved the harvesting cost by about 135-195%, for harvesting Shimlaly and Tofahy olive varieties, respectively comparing with manual harvesting method. These results means that the use of hand-held olive harvesters could be reduced the amount of labors or time needed to carry out the olive harvesting operation in the best period and obtain the best harvested fruits quality. In addition to make the introduction of hand-held olive harvesters easier, feasible and more economical especially when used for other purposes to run devices such as scissors and saws to mechanize tree pruning.