Experimental study of an agricultural machine for pneumatic oil-bearing rose harvesting
Snezhan Bozhkov
Abstract: In the cultivation of the oil-bearing rose, only the harvesting of the flowers in the rose plantations is completely manual. Research on the mechanization of the harvesting operation has been going on for the past few years. Partially improving the working conditions and speeding up the harvesting operation are provided by the developed technical means for transporting the hand-picking flowers pickers and their collected produce in the rows of the plantations with the oil-bearing culture. The attempt to fully mechanize the harvesting operation through the creation of a rose harvester that only picks off the petals was received skeptically by the specialists in the rose-producing branch both from the point of view of functional suitability and due to doubts about the economic inexpediency of the development.
Preservation of the traditional hand-picking method of picking off the rose flower under the ovary, picking off the flowers to be harvested without injuring the adjacent undissolved buds and foliage, limiting to a minimum the contact with the thorns on the rose stems and stinging insects, etc., advantages provides a newly developed agricultural machine for pneumatic harvesting in oil-bearing rose plantations, field test results of which are presented in the paper. Experimentally established during the testing of two of its variants (one-row and two-row) are the advantages of machine picking over traditional manual picking - better working conditions for the pickers, complete harvesting of the rose flowers to be picked for the day, higher productivity. The main factors (the condition of the rose plantation, the amount of blooming rose flowers, the qualification of the rose pickers) on which the efficiency of the pneumatic rose harvesting machine depends are determined. The ability to ensure the productivity of the tractor/implement combination formed on the basis of the two-row variant of the machine, with which, within the specified time range to harvest the production from plantations with an area of 1.2 ha and more, has been proven.
Preservation of the traditional hand-picking method of picking off the rose flower under the ovary, picking off the flowers to be harvested without injuring the adjacent undissolved buds and foliage, limiting to a minimum the contact with the thorns on the rose stems and stinging insects, etc., advantages provides a newly developed agricultural machine for pneumatic harvesting in oil-bearing rose plantations, field test results of which are presented in the paper. Experimentally established during the testing of two of its variants (one-row and two-row) are the advantages of machine picking over traditional manual picking - better working conditions for the pickers, complete harvesting of the rose flowers to be picked for the day, higher productivity. The main factors (the condition of the rose plantation, the amount of blooming rose flowers, the qualification of the rose pickers) on which the efficiency of the pneumatic rose harvesting machine depends are determined. The ability to ensure the productivity of the tractor/implement combination formed on the basis of the two-row variant of the machine, with which, within the specified time range to harvest the production from plantations with an area of 1.2 ha and more, has been proven.
Keywords: agricultural machine; oil-bearing rose; operational parameters; pneumatic harvesting; test
Citation: Bozhkov, S. (2024). Experimental study of an agricultural machine for pneumatic oil-bearing rose harvesting. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 30(4), 728–733
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Date published: 2024-08-27
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