Investigating and Evaluation of Gourd Seed Harvesting Machine

Gourd is one of summer crops cultivated in some provinces in Iran. Gourd Seeds contain high amounts of oil and proteins. Farmers in Iran usually use small pieces of lands to cultivate gourd. Therefore, it is not possible to apply big mechanical equipment for gourd harvesting and so for seed harvesting. In other words, gourd seed harvesting should be done by small size ground seed harvesters. A device was designed, fabricated, and finally evaluated for mechanically harvesting gourd seeds in the workshop of Department of Agricultural Machinery at Gorgan University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources. The effects of rotational speeds of separator cylinder (70, 65, 55 rpm), pitch angle of the cylinder (zero angle and three degrees with negative slope), and the size of meshes (1x3, 2x2 and 3x3 cm) on harvester performance were studied. In this research we used factorial experiments with 3 factors in three replications in completely randomized design. Results indicated that the effects of rotational speed and pitch angle of separator shaft on harvesting gourd seeds were significant at 5% level, and the effects of rotational speed of thresher cylinder on seed breaking were not significant. The results suggest that the best rotational speed for separator cylinder was 55 rpm and the best mesh size and pitch angle were 2x2 cm and zero degree.