Vol. 10, Issue 10 (2021)

Author(s):
A Astina Joice, P Rajkumar, R Arulmari, I Geethalakshmi and S Pazhanivelan

Abstract:
Fruit and vegetable quality is extremely important in today's agricultural industry because of the intense market. Grading of agricultural products, particularly fruits and vegetables, has become a need for trading. It is primarily done by hand, which necessitates a substantial amount of labour. Human operations may be difficult, inconsistency, inefficiency, and time consumption. Farmers are hoping for a suitable solution for the farm produce-grading machine to reduce manpower shortages, save time, and create graded items in a better quality with market acceptance. Taking this as an objective a size grader was developed for the Mosambi fruits. The components of the grader were fabricated after studying the engineering properties of the fruit. The developed grader’s performance was evaluated. For optimising the grader conveying speed of 170,220 and 270 rpm were chosen. The angle of inclination between roller and the belt conveyor varied as 10,15 and 20 ̊. Maximum overall efficiency of the grader for Mosambi was recorded as 82% at 10 ̊, 270 rpm and the capacity of the grader was around 770 kg/h.