Development and Evaluation of Garlic Harvester for Raised Beds

Abstract

Harvesting is considered one of the most time-consuming and laborious agricultural operation in garlic cultivation. This work can be easily done by mechanical means, thereby saving time, labor and money. Working of a mechanical garlic harvester in vertisol soil is difficult under flat conditions but it can be made easier by making raised beds. There is a need for a machine that can perform the intended harvesting task with its uniquely designed blade that penetrates vertisol soil easily and is able to pull out the garlic without damaging the bulb. Therefore, a garlic harvester has been developed and its operating parameters were optimized for harvesting the garlic crop sown in raised beds. An experiment was carried out in the field to investigate the effect of forward speed, conveying speed, and dropping height of a garlic harvester on digging efficiency, bulb damage, and fuel consumption using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). A forward speed of 1.53 km/h, dropping height of 0.47 m and conveying speed of 0.65 m/s were found to be optimal for operation of the machine on raised bed. The RSM successfully optimized the operational parameters of machine and predicted the performance parameters with less error. The optimum operating parameters improved the performance of machine in field by lowering bulb breakage, reducing fuel consumption and increasing garlic digging efficiency. The effective field capacity of harvester was 0.21 ha/h at field efficiency of 72.1%. The savings in cost and labor requirement were found to be 63.4 and 96.2% respectively as compared to manual method of garlic digging. The developed machine with triangular point blade and optimized operating parameters makes it better for working in black cotton soil. It will help farmers, garlic growers and agricultural machinery manufacturers to increase mechanization in garlic cultivation.