Babou, C.

Bai, S. Kamala

Raghuramulu, Y.

Venkatesha, M.M.

English

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400Journal of Plantation Crops, 2014, 42(3):400-403Short Scientific ReportStudies on comparative efficiency of different mechanicalharvesters in coffee with reference to manual harvestingM.M. Venkatesha, C. Babou*, S. Kamala Bai and Y. RaghuramuluDivision of Agronomy, Central Coffee Research Institute, Coffee Research Station Post -577 117, ChikmagalurDistrict, Karnataka, India(Manuscript Received: 21-06-13, Revised:17-06-14, Accepted: 18-07-14)Keywords: Coffee, efficiency, manual harvesting, mechanical harvesters* Corresponding Author: kcbabou@gmail.comMechanization is relatively new and coffee stillremains primarily as a hand crop. The coffeecultivation in countries like Brazil, USA (Hawaii)and Australia has been mechanized to a great extentto bring down dependence on human labour, whichis very expensive in these countries.  In countriesincluding India, coffee is essentially grown in hillyand undulating terrain coupled with presence ofshade trees and the operations are carried out mainlyby human labour making mechanization in coffeevirtually impossible.Among the plantation crops, coffee is one ofthe most labour intensive crop after tea in India.The annual requirement of labour for undertakingregular cultural operations is about 456 per ha incase of Arabica, 266 per ha in case of unirrigatedRobusta and 326 per ha in case of irrigated Robustacoffee. The cost of labour alone constitutes about70 per cent of the total cultivation costs in case ofArabica and about 59 to 65 per cent in case ofRobusta coffee.In recent years, labour shortage in plantationsector has become acute due to migration of workersto urban areas in search of easy and better living.Majority of the permanent workers employed in thefarms belong to older age group aggravating thelabour shortage for critical operations. Due to theuneven slopy terrain and presence of shade trees,use of big machinery is ruled out in coffee estates.Thus, efforts were being made at Central CoffeeResearch Institute to design small size machineriessuitable for use in sloping terrains of coffee estates.In this direction, the Institute has been evaluatingvarious machineries available in the market to studytheir suitability in coffee estates.Among the total labour requirement, about one-third of the labour is required only for harvestingand processing of coffee at estate level. Theharvesting period being short (November to March),there is a lot of pressure on the availability ofworkers since the operation is spread over all theestates in different zones. Thus, harvesting is oneof the most preferred operations for introducingmechanization in coffee.In recent years, especially after the year 2000,though prices were good for coffee, the planter wasunable to carry out all the operations in theirholdings due to acute scarcity of labour coupledwith high wages demanded by the contractors. Inview of this, it is essential to think over the alternatemethods to carryout the cultural operations. Thus,there is a need to improve the efficiency of inputuse and increase the productivity of labour and theland to reduce the cost of production and to increaseoverall income from the holdings. One such adventcould be introduction of mechanization to carry outfield operations (Raghuramulu, 2009). Harvestingoperations in coffee is time bound where the berriesare harvested in time, to avoid berry drop.  Fortimely harvesting and to reduce the risk of the labouravailability, a research work was initiated with theobjectives of studying the efficacy of two types of401harvesting machines, their suitability in harvestingdifferent varieties and  the efficacy of mechanicalverses manual harvesting.The study was conducted during 2009-10harvesting season to evaluate the efficiency of twotypes of hand held battery operated harvestingmachines/mechanical shakers viz., indigenousharvester (Coffee bean stripper)  and  importedharvester (Guliver) in Arabica coffee at CCRI farmand Robusta coffee in private estates  and comparedwith manual harvesting.  Mechanical shaker orharvesting equipment consists of shaker, catchingframe and conveying devices (Fig. 1 and 2). Thebasic principle is to accelerate each fruit so thatinertia force developed will be greater than thebonding force between the fruit and the tree (Kepneret al., 1987, Duncan et al., 2008). The number ofcoffee berries detached depends on the exposure tomechanical vibration, which in turn is determinedby the amplitude and frequency of the shaking ofthe catching frames, the height from the ground atwhich the tree is shaken, the height of the tree, thestrength of bond between the berries and the tree,the duration of exposure to shaking and the massof the berries.The harvesters were provided with anelectronic card which controlled frequencystabilization, short-circuit protection, overloadrestriction.  It was supplied with 3.2 m long cable,belt and 12V rechargeable battery for operating8 hours and weighed around 900 g. Data on numberof plants harvested per day, time taken to harvest,quantity of fruits harvested, fallen green leaves,number of bearing wood removed and damagedfruits were recorded. The data was worked out forboth manual and mechanical harvesters for aworking day of 6 hours. Two workers wereemployed for each mechanical harvesting machinei.e., for harvesting and for spreading the mat andcollection of fruits. An equal number of workerswere used for manual harvesting of fruits whichserved as control.Evaluation of mechanical harvesters inArabica coffee plantationIn case of Arabica coffee, the data revealedthat fruit harvested per man day differed withdifferent mechanical harvesters and manualharvesting (Table 1). Indigenous and importedharvesters harvested 86.6 kg and 83.9 kg fruitper man day respectively, while 73.7 kg fruit perman day was harvested manually by (Table 1).There was not much difference among the twotypes of the mechanical harvesters in terms ofquantity of fruits harvested per man day.  Thequantity of fruit harvested was more (12 kg fruitsper man day) in mechanical harvesters comparedto manual harvesting.  In terms of harvestingefficiency, it was not comparable with manual, asit was only about 14 to 18 per cent higher outputefficiency over manual harvesting.The mechanical harvesting resulted in 13.1 to13.9 per cent damage to fruits compared to manualwhich was only 3.5 per cent. Besides, mechanicalharvesting also resulted in damaging of 1.2 to 1.6productive twigs per man day, while it was almostnil (0.1 per cent) in case of manual harvesting.Productive twigs are the twigs which carries berriesof the successive year, if lost leads to adequate lossFig. 1. Imported harvester (Guliver)Fig. 2. Indigenous harvester (Coffee bean stripper)402of crop yield in the following year. Hence, themechanical harvesters were not superior to manualharvesting in case of Arabica. Result obtained inthe present study was in accordance to the findingsof Venkatesha et al. (2010).Evaluation of mechanical harvesters inRobusta coffee plantationIn Robusta, the quantity of fruit harvested bythe mechanical harvesters i.e., coffee beanstripper was 137 kg per man day, which wassignificantly more by 37 kg per man day whencompared to manual harvesting (100 kg fruits perman day). The damage occurred to the fruitswhile harvesting on use of mechanical harvesterswas more in Arabica coffee (13.2 to 13.9 per cent)as against only 6.6 per cent in Robusta coffee,which was almost comparable with manualTable 1. Comparison of  mechanical harvesting vs manual harvesting in Arabica coffeeMode of harvesting No. of Total number Total fruit Per cent Productive DamagedLabour of plants harvested (kg) increase over twigs damaged/ fruits (%)harvested day-1   man day-1 manual plant (No.)Imported harvester 1 27 83.9 13.9 1.6 13.9Indigenous harvester 1 43 86.7 17.6 1.2 13.2Manual harvesting (Stripping ) 1 39 73.7 - 0.1 3.5SEm± 1.3 2.2 - 0.0 0.4CD (5%) 3.9 6.7 - 0.1 1.1harvesting which recorded only 2.7 per cent inRobusta coffee (Table 2) .There was no comparable difference in damageto productive branches among mechanical (1.5%)and manual harvesting (2.2%) methods implyingthat there was no significant crop loss on use ofmechanical harvesters in Robusta coffee either inpresent year or successive year.  In Arabica coffee,per cent damage of productive branches and damageto fruits was more as compared to Robusta. While,using mechanical harvester 16.7 per cent of labourand cost was saved over manual in case of Arabicaand 35.8 per cent in case of Robusta (Table 3). Theseresults indicate that there is a good scope forharnessing mechanical harvesting in case ofRobusta coffee under Indian conditions comparedto Arabica coffee. Similar findings were reportedby Venkatesha et al. (2010).Table 2. Comparison of mechanical harvester vs manual harvesting in Robusta coffeeMode of harvesting No. of Total number Total fruit Per cent Productive DamagedLabour of plants harvested (kg) increase over twigs damaged/ fruits (%)harvested day-1   man day-1 manual plant (No.)harvestingIndigenous harvester 1 25 137.0 37.0 1.5 6.6Manual harvesting (Stripping) 1 18 100.9 - 2.2 2.7SEm± 0.8 1.8 0.1 0.2CD (5%) 2.5 5.5 0.3 0.5Table 3. Economic analysis of mechanical harvester vs manual harvesting in Arabica and Robusta coffeeMode of harvesting Number of labour Labour cost Per cent labour and costrequired for harvesting ha-1 (` ha-1) saving over manualArabica Robusta Arabica Robusta Arabica RobustaIndigenous harvester 72 53 10800 7950 16.7 35.8Manual harvesting (Stripping) 84 72 12600 10800 - -Venkatesha et al.403From the study, it can be concluded that use ofmechanical harvesters offers a good scope inRobusta coffee than Arabica coffee under Indianconditions to avoid the drudgery and dependenceof labour and to improve the efficiency of the farmworkers. However, it is optional to use themechanical harvester in Arabica.ReferencesKepner, R.A., Bainer, R. and Barger, E.L. 1987.  FarmMachinery, CBS Plantations, Publishers and Distributors,Daya Basti, Delhi.Mbuge,  D.O. and Langat, P.K. 2008. Principles of amechanical shaker for coffee harvesting, AgriculturalEngineering International: The CIGR eJournal.Manuscript PM 07 016. Vol. X.Raghuramulu, Y. 2009. Prospects of mechanization in Indiancoffee, Indian Coffee, LXXIII(4&5), 4-11.Venkatesha, M.M., Biradar, I.B.S., Kamala Bai, S., Sunil Babu,D., Raghuramulu, Y. and Jayarama. 2010. Studies onefficiency of different mechanical harvesters in coffee.International Symposium on Plantation Crops(PLACROSYM-XIX), 7-10 December 2010, Kottayam,Kerala pp. 14-15.Efficiency of mechanical harvesters in coffee

Studies on comparative efficiency of different mechanical harvesters in coffee with reference to manual harvesting

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Studies on comparative efficiency of different mechanical harvesters in coffee with reference to manual harvesting

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