Vol. 12, Special Issue 9 (2023)

Author(s):
K Aswathi, VK Tiwari and AL Vadher

Abstract:
In Saurashtra, most farmers manually harvest leafy crops like coriander, fenugreek, and Indian spinach. This traditional approach involves various postures like squatting, bending, and sitting while bending. Commonly, hand injuries such as cuts from tools and bruises from plant pulling occur during harvesting. Manual leafy crop harvesting is both time-intensive and demanding. The crops' perishable nature requires timely harvesting with sufficient labor, as delays can harm product quality. At the Department of FMPE, College of Agricultural Engineering, JAU, Junagadh, a self-propelled harvester for leafy crops like coriander and fenugreek has been successfully designed and developed. Powered by a 5 hp diesel engine, this machine incorporates essential elements including the main frame, cutting unit, conveyor unit, storage unit, steering unit, and transportation unit. Through an ergonomic evaluation, the harvesting process using this newly developed harvester has been classified as moderately heavy work. From an economic standpoint, a comparative analysis was conducted between this advanced leafy crop harvester and the conventional harvesting technique. The overall cost of the self-propelled leafy crop harvester was calculated as ₹96,135. Utilizing this harvester reduced the labor requirement to 7.63 (approximately 8) man-hours per ha, whereas manual harvesting demanded a substantial 160 man-hours per ha. Consequently, the newly developed harvester showcases significant cost savings amounting to ₹5,009.62 per ha. This equates to a remarkable 71.57% reduction in costs and an impressive time saving of 95.30% for leafy crop harvesting operations. Evaluating the economics further, the benefit-cost ratio and payback period for this self-propelled harvester were determined as 3.05 and 2.62 years, respectively. The break-even point for the developed leafy crop harvester was found to be 122.9 h/year.