Precision Agriculture Science and Technology ISSN:2672-0086(Print) 2713-5632(Online) 정밀농업과학기술

Domestic cabbage production in Korea draws the interest of mechanized harvesting and collecting operations from the field using mechanical collector. The objective of this study was to assess the performance and economic feasibility of a tractor-mounted Chinese cabbage collector under development. The field test was performed for 12-week old Chinese cabbages. Four different tractor forward speeds were observed with an average fuel consumption of 23.95 lhr-1. The theoretical field capacity, effective field capacity, and field efficiency were calculated and the effect of forward tractor speed was evaluated. With the increase of forward speed, the field capacity of the prototype was also increased, with a high correlation coefficient (R2=0.99). The field efficiency was found to be slightly decreased with the increase of forward speed. The damage percentage of the harvested cabbages was 20.5% and the slip ratio of the tractor wheel was calculated as 1.6. The economic analysis showed that the mechanized cabbage collection method was found to be 74% cost effective than the conventional manual method. The study also showed that the Chinese cabbage collector was commercially feasible for field application.