Vol. 8, Issue 10 (2019)

Author(s):
Ajay D Makwana, Ram Vaibhav, Dr. Saumya Shukla and Dr. VK Tiwari

Abstract:
Cactus pear fruit is fully thorny fruit which is very difficult to harvest. Therefore, this study was taken to solve the harvesting problem of this thorny fruit. First the engineering properties of Cactus pear fruit namely length, width, thickness, equivalent diameter, weight, firmness, sphericity, volume and density were observed/determined and considering these properties a harvesting device was developed and its performance evaluated in terms of harvesting capacity, losses, cost and efficiency. Use of the developed device Cactus pear fruit was harvested 10.05 kg/h with 6.14% harvesting loss, ` 4.98 per kg harvesting cost and with 93.86% harvesting efficiency i.e. 32.76% more capacity, 48.61% less loss, 24.54% less cost and 48.61% more efficiency compared to existing method.