Ergonomic Evaluation of Manual Citrus Fruit Harvester

Abstract

The arduous operation of harvesting is usually performed manually with  use of traditional hand tools in upright posture, inducing back pain for majority of labours. In traditional method of harvesting, fruits get damage. To overcome of these problem manual citrus fruits harvester was developed at Deptt. of Farm Power and Machinery, Dr.PDKV, Akola. Ergonomical evaluation of harvester has taken in to study and found that, the average work pulse value was found to be 38 beats/min. The average oxygen consumption  was found to be 0.46 lit/min.  Overall discomfort rating was observed as 2.5 which comes under the category of "light” discomfort. Body part discomfort score was found to be 4.5. The work load by harvester comes under "moderate” category. The average output of the harvester was found to 2.61  kg/hr.  The fabrication cost of harvester was Rs. 600/-