Journal
AGRICULTURE-BASEL
Volume 12, Issue 8, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/agriculture12081233
Keywords
nondestructive collection; tomato; numerical simulation; shelf life; damage rate
Categories
Funding
- major science and technology innovation project of Shandong Province [2019JZZY020620]
- major agricultural applied technology innovation project of Shandong province
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This paper proposed a whole process tomato harvester with a nondestructive post-harvest collection operation mode, which aimed to solve the problem of high damage rate during automatic greenhouse tomato harvesting. Numerical simulation and experimental results showed that the device could meet agricultural requirements by minimizing mechanical damage to tomatoes.
This paper proposed a whole process tomato harvester with a nondestructive post-harvest collection operation mode, which was aimed to solve the high damage rate problem during the automatic greenhouse tomato harvesting process. The post-harvest device mainly included the net bag mechanism, the conveying and collecting mechanism, whose structure and materials were carefully designed to satisfy the nondestructive collection principle. Numerical simulation was done to evaluate the damage under three working conditions, which showed that the peak contact stress of tomatoes was 0.107 MPa, 0.098 MPa, and 0.11 MPa, respectively, all smaller than the damage stress of tomato peel tissue. In the postharvest prototype experiment, the degree of mechanical damage based on the shelf life of tomatoes during the color turning stage and red ripening stage was used as the evaluation index. Results showed that when tomatoes were dropped from the 60 mm higher position than the net bag mechanism, and the speed of the conveyor belt was 9 r min(-1), the degree of mechanical damage at the color turning stage and red ripening stage was 1.9% and 9.5%, respectively. The harvest time of greenhouse tomatoes was always around the color turning stage, thus the proposed device can well meet the agricultural requirements.
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