Harvesting Equipments, Sickle, Potato Digger, Hoists, Tapioca Harvester, Fruit Harvester

1. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS
Dr. Ajay Singh Lodhi
Assistant Professor
College of Agriculture, Balaghat
Jawahar Lal Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Jabalpur (M.P.)

2. HARVESTING
It is the operation of cutting, picking, plucking digging or a combination of these operations
for removing the crop from under the ground or above the ground or removing the useful part
or fruits from plants.
Harvesting action can be done by four ways:
Slicing action with a sharp tool.
Tearing action with a rough serrated edge.
High velocity single element impact with sharp or dull edge.
Two elements scissors type action.
The harvesting involves slicing and tearing action. The harvesting can be done either by
manually operated tool or animal drawn equipment or mechanically operated machine.

3. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS
Sickle:
Sickle is a simple harvesting tool. It is used for harvesting crops
and cutting other vegetations.
The sickle mainly consists of a metallic blade and a wooden
handle. Blade is the main metallic part of the sickle. The blade
should be made of carbon steel. The blade is made in curved
shape.
There are two types of metallic cutting blade such as plain and
serrated.
The teeth of serrated sickle are made sharp for efficient working in
the field. The handle of the sickle is made of well seasoned wood.
The forged end of the blade for fixing the handle is called tang.
Protective metallic bush fitted at the junction of the blade and the
handle to keep the tang tight in the handle is called ferrule.
Harvesting by sickle is a very slow and labour consuming device.

4. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – POTATO DIGGER
Potato Digger
A potato digger suitably designed to be operated as a mounted
machine by a tractor.
The potato harvester is used extensively for harvesting
potatoes in Northern States of India.
The machine uses conventional digging blade and a shaker
conveyor made of steel rods.
 As the tractor with the machine moves over the field, the soil
and potatoes are dug out and lifted on the conveyor chain.
The soil is shaken out by agitation where as the potatoes are
collected in bags.
Animal Drawn Potato Digger

5. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – POTATO DIGGER
The tractor operated potato digger consists of a three
point hitch frame, main frame, and two column frames
with blade.
Blade is fixed to with two detachable ridge opening
devices.
On the sides of the columns, two furrow guides are
provided for stability of the digger.
Two replaceable high carbon steel shovels are fitted in
front of the blade for easy penetration in dry field
conditions and to prevent it from wear.

6. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – POTATO DIGGER
The tractor powered potato digger can be conveniently divided into four broad
categories:
Blade type diggers,
Single row spinner digger type machines,
Single or double row elevator diggers,
Oscillating / vibrator diggers.
The most common among the four designs as stated above is the elevator type digger.
The commercial machines are of both single row and two row types. The machine
consists of a shovel type digger and endless elevator to complete the total operation.

7. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – TAPIOCA HARVESTER
The tapioca harvester is tractor operated implement. It consists of a main frame with three
point hitch system, shank with depth adjustment and digging blades with pegs. Provision
is made to for adding dead weight on the main frame. The digging blade is trapezoidal in
shape and five pegs are fitted in front of the blade for easy penetration into the soil and
reduce the draft requirement of the unit. Before digging operation the top portion of the
plant has to be removed. When the implement is pulled forward, tapioca tubers are
uprooted.
The salient features of the are : harvesting efficiency is about 98%, can be easily
attachable to any make of 35 hp tractor, reduction in harvesting cost compared to manual
harvesting, tubers are not left as undug in the field and additional irrigation for manual
digging is eliminated.

8. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – FRUIT HARVESTER
There are two types of manually operated fruit harvesters such a fixed height type with
wooden head and metal cutting blade and adjustable height type with metal head
and metal cutting blade.
Fixed Height Type with wooden Head and Metal Cutting Blade
This type of harvester has a light weight cutting mechanism made of a light bamboo pole.
The components of the harvester include, a wooden head, a metal blade, a spring, a fruit
collecting net, a wooden pole, a hand lever and nylon rope.
The cutting mechanism of the harvester consists of the wooden head, the cutting blade and
the retaining spring.
The wooden head of 220 X 115 X 20 mm is stationary and acts as a support against the
cutting blade when a fruit stem comes between the metal blade of 195 X 58 X 6 mm in
size and the head.

9. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – FRUIT HARVESTER
 The blade is given proper sharpness and heat treatment to prevent fast wear.
 The blade is always held in open position by means of a soft spring of 64 mm
in length and 90 mm in diameter.
 The blade moves against the tension of the spring while cutting is taking place.
 Immediately after cutting, the blade is pulled back to its original open position
by the spring which is connected between the blade and the pole.
 A nylon net is fixed around a ring of 300 mm diameter made of 8 mm steel rod,
just below the cutting mechanism to collect the cut fruit, thus a avoiding any
damage.
 The net depth is kept at about 270 mm. The entire cutting mechanism was
fitted to a bamboo pole of 12 mm diameter and 3.5 m length.
 At about 380 mm from the bottom end, a hand lever is fitted to the pole.
 The metal cutting blade on the top and the hand lever are connected by a nylon
rope of 3.2 m length.
 By pushing the hand lever down, the blade moves against the head and cutting
takes place.

10. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – FRUIT HARVESTER
Adjustable Height with Metal Head and Metal Blade Harvester
 In this type of harvester, the cutting mechanism is similar to the fixed height type harvester.
 The variations are only in head and pole length to achieve increased adjustable height up to 5.4m.
An additional base plate is provided at the bottom of the pole.
 The cutting head was fabricated out of angle iron of 191 X 115 X 6 mm size. The pole is
composed of two G.I. pipes of 12 mm and 18 mm sizes. One can be inserted in to the other.
 This telescopic arrangement of poles is helpful in varying the height. The pole can be fixed at any
desired height by a clamp arrangement, thus making it flexible, adjustable and not fixed as in
earlier harvester.
 The cutting mechanism is arranged at the top of a 12 mm pipe by means of a coupling.
 This facilitates dismantling and assembly of the cutting mechanism from the pole.
 Provision of base plate at the bottom of the pole with U-clamp arrangement helps to freely move
pole in all directions to meet fruit orientation.
 This facilitates the operation of the harvester although it is heavier than the fixed type harvester.

11. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – FRUIT HARVESTER
Hoists
 A hoist is a device used for lifting or lowering a load by means of a
drum or lift-wheel around which rope or chain wraps.
 It may be manually operated, electrically or pneumatically driven and
may use chain, fiber or wire rope as its lifting medium.
 The load is attached to the hoist by means of a lifting hook.
Tractor mounted telescopic hoist
 The tractor-mounted hoist can be used in orchards and plantation crops
for trimming, pruning, plant protection and harvesting operations.
 It consists of two square aluminium ladders, each made of U-section as
frames and round hollow pipes as cross members .

12. HARVESTING EQUIPMENTS – FRUIT HARVESTER
 The U-sections of the outer ladder are inward facing while U-
sections of the inner ladder face outward, sliding one over the
other.
 Two wire ropes are provided, which are driven with a
hydraulic motor.
 The motor, while running in clockwise direction helps in
lifting the inner ladder and while running in anti clockwise
direction, lowers the inner ladder down.
 A support frame fitted to the platform on the top end of the
inner ladder helps as a safety frame. While transporting, the
hoist can be folded and tilted to horizontal position over
tractor canopy.

13. Thank You