Selection of harvestable tea shoots based on height and stiffness

Abstract

Tea harvesting in Sri Lanka is extremely labor intensive and mechanization incorporated in the process is minimal. The main reason for this is the inability of existing harvesting devices to discriminate harvestable generations of tea shoots from the rest. To supersede manual harvesting, such devices should essentially harvest only tender tea shoots leaving the immature ones intact. In an ongoing research it was hypothesized that the height and stiffness of tea shoots are suitable parameters to distinguish harvestable tea shoots. A selection mechanism was then developed based the statistical information of the two identified parameters. Mathematical models were used to further improve its configuration, followed by experimental validation. Finally, field tests were conducted using a prototype to verify the accuracy of the proposed selection method. Test results showed promise and prompt further investigation.