Developed hand tool to pick Prickly pear fruit.
- Agric. Bio-Engineering Res. Dept. Agric. Engineering Res., Institute (AEnRI). Agric. Res. Center (ARC)., Giza. Egypt.
- Agronomy Dept. Al- Azhar Univ., Cairo. Egypt.
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Prickly pear (Cactus) is one of important plant for sustainable development at arid region. Enhancing picking process and reducing microbial spoilage incident during hand picking a fundamental goal, to face obstacles spread planting. Due to fruits and cladodes restrictive properties (physical and mechanical), an ergonomic pruning shear has been developed to pick fruits. Results show that, using developed aid has a significant effect (P < 0.05) on labour productivity and picking cost compared with hand picking. Picking by developed aid due to increased productivity about 7.2% and decreased cost about 0.04LE.kg-1. Also, results show that microbial spoilage (total colonies count of bacteria ), has an inverse proportion with cutting piece volume from cladode (mm3).
[Abd El – Ghany, Horia, M.A., Ismail, Nahed, K., El- Bialee, N.M., and El- Bialee, N.M. (2015); Developed hand tool to pick Prickly pear fruit. Int. J. of Adv. Res. 3 (May). 1307-1315] (ISSN 2320-5407). www.journalijar.com
